


Catharsis

by ruasquirrel



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Depression, Emotional Baggage, Emotional Hurt, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Flashbacks, Gen, Homeworld (Steven Universe), Hurt/Comfort, Light Angst, Mental Health Issues, Psychological Trauma, Steven has PTSD and unresolved emotional issues but hey what else is new amiright, Talking, Trauma, pre-movie post-series, steven finally opens up, steven finally tells the gems about white's head, steven goes on a drive to avoid his feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-18
Updated: 2019-12-03
Packaged: 2020-12-21 13:10:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 37,170
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21075437
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ruasquirrel/pseuds/ruasquirrel
Summary: It was high time that he admitted he needed help.-'And suddenly he couldn’t breathe. And suddenly he felt there was something very wrong with the fact that he was in the same room with a being that had tried to so brutally end his life just a year and a half ago. A being that had torn him asunder and spared no thought to the consequences. And here they were acting like they were family, acting as if everything was okay and that there was nothing at all messed up about any of it.'





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright, baby's first fanfic.  
Please be gentle with me lmao
> 
> I'm Northern Irish so apologies if there are some weird phrasings or sentence structures that aren't used globally, I tried to be as standard as possible, should all be perfectly legible though *thumbs up*

It wasn’t that he was trying to avoid reading his messages. It just so happened he had his phone on silent. And it just so happened that he had set it face down on the passenger seat, so that he couldn’t see the screen.

It just so happened that he had had the keys to his father’s car in his pocket since that morning, and it just so happened that he felt like going for a drive round the coast, all by his lonesome. Just a bit of Me Time, he told himself. That was healthy, right?

And all of this had absolutely nothing to do with what had happened earlier today.

Rounding a corner, he found himself on a long stretch of road atop a cliff, providing him with a prime view across Rehoboth Bay. Steven momentarily forgot himself as he gazed across the sparkling ocean, the late afternoon sun hanging low in the sky and illuminating the sea. Soft orange-yellow light reflected off the surface of the water. Despite everything, an indescribable feeling of tranquillity washed over him, the likes of which he hadn’t felt in weeks. Months, even. The sea seemed to always have that effect on him, the one thing about Beach City that never changed.

Beach City.

Home.

A place which he had been seeing less and less of as of late, his Diamond duties requiring him to hop from planet to planet, star system to star system like some intergalactic game of hopscotch. But no matter how much of the galaxy he saw, no matter how many planets he visited or how far into the cosmos he ventured, his home was still his favourite place. There really was no other planet quite like Earth, and there was no other town quite like Beach City. Steven didn’t even notice that he had begun to smile ever so slightly at the thought of it. He was pulled out of his reverie, however, when he suddenly remembered that he was, in fact, in the driver’s seat and he hadn’t, in fact, been looking where he was driving for almost an entire minute.

‘Eyes on the road, Universe’, he muttered to himself, smile fading from his lips.

He didn’t have any particular destination in mind, nor did he have any particular goal. All he knew was that he felt a complicated mass of emotions twisting and turning inside his chest that he couldn’t quite figure out, that he couldn’t even begin to decipher.

Steven knew, of course, that talking it out helps. He knew that he shouldn’t bottle up his feelings, or isolate himself, or try to tackle his problems alone. But somehow he found himself uncomfortable with the idea of revealing the true nature of his feelings, and the idea of retelling certain… events. Once people discovered he wasn’t actually feeling all too great after all, the questions would start. Questions he had no idea how to answer. Questions he wasn’t sure he wanted to answer. Questions he wasn’t sure he wanted to know the answers to. In theory he knew he would be stupid to keep it all to himself, it would be better for everyone if he were to just come out and talk about it.

Or maybe it wouldn’t. The last thing his family needed was for him to so selfishly interfere with their newfound peace and happiness by dumping his emotional burdens on them. ‘_The future is bright’_, he reminded himself, ‘_the past is in the past. It’s too late to start talking about it now.’_ It wouldn’t do anyone any good to go digging up issues that had already been buried by time. ‘_You just have to stop thinking about it’_, he told himself.

He had spent his formative years playing therapist for just about every other human being and gem he had ever known, solving their problems, soothing their torrid emotions, settling conflicts that had gone on for millennia. Even now, with the dust settled and the Empire at peace he found himself with the weight of the universe resting on his shoulders. Literally. He couldn’t allow himself to be bogged down by past emotions.

He pulled over to the side of the road, leaned against the steering wheel and silently watched as the sun slipped past the horizon, disappearing behind the endless black sea.

* * *

For any other human being it would have been a foray into a fascinating and otherworldly alternate reality, for Steven it was just another Wednesday afternoon. There he stood in the Diamond throne room, casually chatting with three skyscraper-sized, technicolour, super-powered aliens. It was almost time for him to return to Earth after yet another extended stay on Homeworld (those were becoming more and more frequent as of late) and the act of going home was starting to become an ordeal in itself.

“And you’re sure you have to leave today? Right this second?” questioned Yellow Diamond.

“Well, I don’t have to, per se…” Steven rubbed the back of his neck. He really didn’t have to leave right this instant, but he was just so darn tired. He was tired of talking colonies and reparations and relocations, he was tired of thinking about agates and kyanites and morganites, he was tired of discussing fusion and freedom and the value of organic life, and he was beginning to sorely miss the comforts of home.

“Well, then why not stay a while longer?” pressed Blue, her expression the picture of innocent affection. Steven knew she was anything but innocent, but he found it so difficult to look her in the face and feel any sort of hatred for her. He wasn’t sure he was capable of truly hating anyone (well, except maybe Kevin).

“Uh-“

Before he could even get a word in, White Diamond interjected.

“Oh Steven, it just isn’t the same when you aren’t here with us! The palace becomes so unbearably drab and lonely! We need you here, Starlight!” She whined dramatically. Her tone was a perfect amalgamation of loving and manipulative in a way that was so distinctly _her_.

“We’re really gonna have to work on your habit of guilt tripping people…” Steven said with a sigh. Her use of the nickname ‘Starlight’ didn’t sit too well with him either. To be honest, it made him slightly uneasy. Did she still on some level think of him as Pink Diamond?

White simply blinked at him, her eyes widening slightly. She seemed genuinely perplexed that he had interpreted her words as manipulative, and that he didn’t appreciate what she had intended to be flattery. Her confused expression was quickly replaced by an easy smile.

“Well, we can start ‘working on it’ right now! No time like the present and all that, and this way you don’t have to hurry back to Earth so soon!”

She had long since stepped down from her throne (in fact, all three Diamonds had), and was now kneeling down in front of him. This, however, did little to change the fact that she still towered hundreds of feet over him.

“Guys, I’m _really_ tired” he whined, dragging out the ‘really’ for a beat or two in the most pitiful voice he could muster, “I really should be getting back to Ea-“

He froze.

It was, for all intents and purposes, a fairly mundane action. And yet it all felt so wrong. White Diamond had reached towards him, clearly intending on picking him up and allowing him to rest on her hand just as Blue and Yellow had many times before. Only White Diamond had never done that before. Watching her massive hand coming steadily closer, he found his eyes flicking between her forefinger and thumb. Her long, sharp, inky black nails appeared to him as a raptor’s talons closing in on its unwitting prey. He felt a shiver down his spine and a sick, twisting sensation in his gut. Clutching his gem reflexively, he took a step backwards.

‘_Now Starlight…_’ he heard White Diamond say, voice dripping with condescension, ‘_This has gone on long enough’._

Except, she hadn’t said anything at all, because her lips hadn’t moved, and she had been frozen in place from the moment he clutched his shirt, as if she knew the significance of that action.

And yet he swore he felt something tugging at his gem, he swore he felt some massive force pinning his arms to his sides and constricting his body. He swore he saw her face coming closer. And he felt her breath against his face as she spoke. The air felt stale and suffocating, his hands were clammy, and all the colour was being drained from the world around him leaving only lifeless greys and perfect, sterile whites.

Teeth clenched and sweat beginning to drip from his brow, he forced himself, trembling, back into the present moment, and somehow found the courage to glance up at White Diamond’s face. She looked… hurt. For the first time in his life he saw genuine guilt, and genuine concern in her expression.

And suddenly he couldn’t breathe. And suddenly he felt there was something very wrong with the fact that he was in the same room with a being that had tried to so brutally end his life just a year and a half ago. A being that had torn him asunder and spared no thought to the consequences. And here they were acting like they were family, acting as if everything was okay and that there was nothing at all messed up about any of it.

And the worst part of it all was that _he_ felt guilty for making _her_ feel guilty.

The room was painfully silent for a few brief yet unbearable seconds. Blue and Yellow Diamond shared a confused glance, but White’s eyes were trained on Steven. Her gaze didn’t do anything to calm his anxiety, in fact he was sure it was making things worse. White was the first to break the silence.

“Steven, I-“

“I have to go” Steven blurted out. He tried to sound as neutral as possible, and cringed internally at the way his voice cracked and wavered.

He bolted for the nearest warp pad and didn’t look back.

* * *

Steven woke with a start to the blaring sound of a car horn. He shot upright and cast panicked glances in all directions. He was still alone, still in his father’s Dondai overlooking the bay. Most vitally of all, he was _safe_. He took a deep breath and released it slowly, in through the nose and out through the mouth. Just like Connie had taught him.

“Must’ve fallen asleep…” he mumbled.

How long had he been asleep, he wondered? Hours? Minutes? Seconds? He dreaded the possibility that he had been unconscious for any longer than a few minutes, that he had extended his little impromptu outing by a few more hours than he had intended. Especially considering that he had left the house suddenly and without explanation as a gaggle of concerned gems eyed his every movement.

He glanced at his phone, still sitting inert in the passenger’s seat. How many missed calls would there be? How many messages? What would they say? What would they _ask_?

Pearl was sure to be in hysterics. Garnet wouldn’t be very happy with him. Amethyst would play it off as if she wasn’t too worried, but he knows better by now. She worries about him just as much as the other two, she’s just better at hiding it.

He shut his eyes and rested his head against the steering wheel, flexing his fingers for a moment before slowly, arduously reaching over and lifting his phone, flipping it around in his hand and laying it on his lap with the screen face-up. Such a simple action, and yet it took such great mental effort. He cracked one eyelid open just enough to see the LED in the top corner flashing rhythmically. There were definitely messages waiting to be read.

“Alright, here goes nothing.”

He took another deep breath, steeling himself. He swiped his finger in a single, determined motion and came face to face with his home screen.

_[Pearl – 7 missed calls]_

_[Dad – 1 missed call]_

_[Pearl – 1 unread message]_

_[Connie – 1 unread message]_

_[Dad – 1 unread message]_

He groaned, loudly. No point in trying to hide his frustration if no one would be around to see it. He was honestly surprised by the amount of restraint shown by Pearl, at least. He expected missed calls from her to be at least in the double digits, and only one message? He likely had Garnet to thank for that, something told him that she would have been the one to rein her in if even just a little. Connie and Dad, on the other hand… That was a shock. They hadn’t been in the house when he had disappeared. Meaning that someone had told them. People were talking about him and his disappearing act. Talking amongst each other about this incredibly selfish thing he had done and he had no way of knowing what they had been saying to each other, how they had been feeling. He mentally berated himself.

_‘Look at what you’ve caused. You’ve made this into a big deal and now everyone’s worried about you for no good reason.’_

Was Connie angry at him? Probably. Was Pearl slowly losing her mind worrying after his safety? Almost definitely. Was his dad on the verge of a panic attack? Most likely. And now there was no getting away with it. He couldn’t just stroll in the door and act like nothing was wrong, head to bed and call it a night.

“Stupid, stupid, stupid!” he hissed through clenched teeth with increasing volume, each word punctuated with a solid bash of his forehead against the wheel.

Once again drawing in a deep breath through his nose and pushing it out, he opened his messages. Connie’s first.

_[Hey, I don’t know what’s going on over there but Pearl called and asked me if you had come over to my place? Did you go out without telling anyone? She sounded pretty worried, is everything okay?]_

She wasn’t mad, not even disappointed. Just worried. A small relief, he supposed. And yet as simple as the message was, he found himself unsure how to respond. After a good thirty seconds of typing, erasing and re-typing a number of responses that all essentially said the same thing, he settled on a simple, vague response.

_[I’m fine, just went out for a drive, I’ll talk to you tomorrow]_

In usual Steven fashion, he included a heart emoji at the end of his message. It had become such a habit for him that Connie even got worried sometimes when he forgot to include it. He realised the significance of his promise to ‘talk tomorrow’ a split second after hitting send.

On to Dad’s message. Oddly enough this was the one he was least concerned about, his dad would never be angry at him for something like this. He was perhaps the one person Steven would never have to worry about being angry at him. It happened so rarely, never without a good reason, and he never lashed out. Never. Steven felt a subtle pang of guilt upon admitting that he didn’t quite trust the gems in that same way. They love him, of course, undeniably. And he loved them, wholeheartedly. But at one point or another they had all, inadvertently or not, lashed out at him as a result of their own emotional turmoil. Harsh words had been said, he had been dragged into conflicts he had no part in creating, and he had been made to feel responsible for their pain. Pearl’s grief and longing, Garnet’s pain upon being deceived, Amethyst’s insecurities and jealousy.

He opened the message.

_[Hey Schtu-ball, just checkin’ in to make sure you’re doin’ alright. Pearl came looking for you at the carwash and she seemed pretty worried for you, bud. Did something happen?]_

Pearl had gone looking for him? Just as his guilty conscience threatened to overtake him, Steven forced the thought to the back of his mind, focusing on composing his response to his dad. He would deal with Pearl in due time.

_[I’m fine, took the Dondai out round the coast, I’ll bring it back to you in the morning I swear. Didn’t mean to worry you, I’ll see you tomorrow]_

Just as he was about to hit send, Steven paused. He added another line to his message.

_[I love you, Dad]_

During the minute or so he spent summoning up the courage to open Pearl’s text, he received a response.

_[Don’t worry about the car, I’m just happy you’re okay_

_Love you too, Schtu-ball]_

The reply came so quick, Steven suspected his father had been watching his phone all evening, waiting for any sign of life from him. That didn’t do anything to help the tingling sense of guilt bubbling up in his stomach.

One final message to read, the one message he had been putting off reading, the one he had nervously anticipated from the moment he set his phone face down on the passenger seat. He sat upright, swallowed hard and opened Pearl’s text.

_[Please come home]_

That did it.

The guilt that had been slowly increasing its hold on him suddenly and violently transformed into full-blown anxiety and remorse. Tears pricking the corners of his eyes, Steven didn’t even bother writing a response. He shoved his phone into his pocket, ignited the engine and reversed back onto the road. He drove as fast as he was sure he could get away with, back in the direction of Beach City.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I definitely want to directly address the conversations Steven will be having with each character in future, if i find the creative energy to keep writing this
> 
> Hopefully I will, because i want to at least have a satisfying conclusion, and despite the fic title there wasn't very much, uh, actual catharsis in this chapter ahaha


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Good news from Northern Ireland, as of around 40 minutes prior to publishing this chapter same-sex marriage has been legalised and abortion decriminalised! What better way to celebrate than updating a fanfic about our favourite gay space rocks and their beautiful baby boy
> 
> Also, emetophobia warning on this chapter, folks

Steven stood on the beach in front of his home, staring vacantly up at the temple, enveloped by the cool night air. For all his eagerness to get back to Beach City, he hadn’t yet dared to approach the steps. As soon as he reached the porch he would be visible through the massive windows at the front of the house. He had to steady himself here and now, he didn’t have the luxury of pausing to take a few deep breaths just outside his door (a screen door, through which the Gems would be able to see him perfectly, he noted).

And so he stood.

His gaze moved upwards, past the cliff and the lighthouse, and settled on the dark sky above. Somewhere out there in infinite space amongst the twinkling stars was Homeworld, and somewhere on Homeworld, the Diamonds. Steven realised then that there was a slightly-more-than-zero chance that they too had been worried about his state of wellbeing. Somehow, he had managed to run out on two families in one day.

He wondered, briefly, if White had told the other two Diamonds about what had happened in her chamber all that time ago. Something told him that she hadn’t, and if that were the case, how would she explain the incident from earlier to Yellow and Blue? Did they talk about it afterwards?

He shook his head, the Diamonds could wait. The Crystal Gems took priority, always. They occupied the forefront of his mind, existed within the deepest, most precious inner sanctums of his heart; they were his true family. And they didn’t deserve all the trouble he had caused. The Diamonds existed in some other category, occupying a space between ‘family’ and ‘political allies’ in some messed up Venn diagram labelled ‘Steven’s Relationships with other Humans and Gems (Many of Whom Have Tried to Murder Him in Cold Blood)’.

He lowered his gaze down to the ground, shifting his sandalled feet around on the sand and observing how it moved, how it would gather up into small mounds that would quickly collapse under their own weight, spilling into his flip flops. He never did mind getting sand in his shoes. Tilting his head upwards, he looked at the beach house and sighed lethargically. The lights were on. It was time to face the music, even if it meant dealing with a chorus of troubled gems. He climbed the steps and opened the door without allowing himself another moment to think about it.

“Hey guys”, he tried his very best to sound normal, but the words came out so much softer and more hesitantly than he had wanted.

Pearl had been perched on the sofa, hunched over with her hand resting on her chin, fingers splayed over her mouth. She had clearly been making a conscious effort not to stare at the door. Garnet had been leaning against the fridge, arms crossed, looking down towards the floor. Amethyst was nowhere to be seen.

A split second after the door had opened, Pearl’s head whipped round to face him.

“Steven!” she called out, her voice strained and ever-so-slightly breathless in a way that tugged at his heartstrings.

Before he could get another word in, she had rushed over and pulled him into a tight embrace, breathing a relieved sigh. Just as he was about to wrap his own arms around her in return however, she pulled back, resting her hands on his shoulders. He found himself immediately missing their closeness, as brief as it had been.

“Where have you been?! Why haven’t you been answering your phone?! I- We’ve been so worried!”, her attempt to sound stern failed miserably, and her shrill voice came out just a tad too loud, and wavered just enough to reveal how truly anxious she had been.

“I, uh… I just went for a drive, Pearl. My phone was on silent mode. I’m okay! Perfectly fine, see?” He chirped, forcing a smile and gesturing towards himself to demonstrate that he had indeed come back home in one piece. Garnet was now standing behind Pearl, regarding him over her shoulder, arms still firmly crossed. He glanced up at her briefly, unable to read her expression. Feeling his cheeks heat up under the weight of her unrelenting stare, he cast his gaze downwards and mumbled.

“Sorry.”

Pearl’s shoulders relaxed at that, her expression softening. Garnet unfolded her arms, placing a hand on her hip and adopting a more casual stance.

“Sit”, came Garnet’s authoritative response, but Steven detected concern in her tone. There was a strange gentleness to the way she gave her order; assertive, but not cold. He did as he was told and made his way over to the sofa, flopping down into a sitting position with very little grace. It wasn’t until he had sat down that he truly appreciated how tired he was.

Garnet simply sat down next to him and placed a hand on his shoulder. He shifted uncomfortably in his seat and averted his gaze.

“Steven.”

He couldn’t bring himself to look her in the face.

“Talk to us.”

He bit the inside of his cheek. Talk? About what? How? Where would he even begin? There were probably a hundred things he could say in this moment and a thousand ways to say them, but all of a sudden every coherent thought and every turbulent emotion he had been feeling had been wiped clean from his memory, leaving him with nothing. Nothing but the unpleasant sensation in his stomach and his hyperawareness of the two gems expectantly watching his every movement. Pearl moved silently over to the sofa and sat daintily next to him, close enough that their thighs were touching, and placed a hand over his own.

Somewhere in the house, he could hear a clock ticking.

Unable to bear the oppressive silence any longer, he attempted to say something, _anything, _tried to force his mouth to form words and compel his paralysed vocal cords into action. But despite his best efforts, his mouth remained firmly shut, and all he managed was a muffled squeak. His eyes began to water, tears threatening to spill out at any moment. The strangled noise he had made must have sounded utterly pathetic, he thought, as now Garnet had shifted herself closer to him, wrapping her arm around his shoulder. His vision became blurry and the tears finally began to slip down his cheeks, he had given up on stopping them. He kept his gaze firmly fixed on the coffee table in front of him.

“Steven”, Garnet said again, pressing him for a response.

He desperately wanted his bed.

Steven finally spoke.

“U-uh…” his voice wavered, barely more audible than a whisper. “I’m tired, guys, I’m… really tired.” _‘In more ways than one’, _he thought, but kept it to himself.

He sniffed, and used his free hand to wipe his eyes.

“Honestly, right now I just want to go to bed.”

“But Steven-", Pearl began, but Garnet interjected.

“We’ll talk in the morning, then.” She stated with a tone of finality, leaving no room for debate.

“Okay.” Steven resigned himself to his fate. Tomorrow, he would talk. Garnet would make sure of that.

Pearl sighed dejectedly, but accepted defeat.

“Right, of course… It’s been a long day, I’m sure you’re exhausted.”

Steven nodded, glanced at Pearl, then at Garnet. For a moment, he felt he didn’t want to move, Garnet’s arm around his shoulders was a comforting, grounding presence, and he sorely didn’t want Pearl to remove her hand from atop his own. But his eyelids were getting heavy, and every moment he sat there he was losing the precious energy he would need to drag himself up the stairs and get ready for bed. He finally pulled himself to his feet, and started on his way to his room.

Stopping at the top of the first flight of stairs, he turned back to find his two guardians still watching him. He managed a tired smile.

“Night, guys. I love you.”

For the first time that evening, Garnet’s expression shifted, mirroring Steven’s own.

“Love you too, Steven.”

“Make sure you get a good night’s sleep, no staying up on your phone!” Pearl added, motherly as ever.

Steven rounded the corner into his bedroom. Without bothering to turn on the light, he clumsily changed into his pyjamas and flopped onto his mattress with a dull thud. Finally, after perhaps the longest day in the history of the Gempire, Steven Quartz Universe had made it to his bed.

* * *

He would never forget the events leading up to his ‘disappearance’.

Still shaken by the incident in the throne room, he had found himself pacing back and forth across his living room floor, desperately trying to slow his quickened breathing, to pacify his racing heart. His belly twisted and churned as he futilely endeavoured to force those horrid memories from his mind, but time and time again he would see flashes of pure white, of long nails as black as night and sharp as daggers, of _her_ malevolent smile. His mouth had been dry when he had stepped off the warp pad, but in the few minutes he had spent neurotically pacing to and fro he found his mouth quickly filling with saliva despite repeated attempts to swallow it down. He swallowed hard once again, but to no avail. His stomach lurched, and he knew exactly what was coming. He made a beeline for the bathroom, and slammed the door behind him just as he heard the front door open and three distinctive sets of footsteps enter the house.

Hastily flipping open the toilet seat, he proceeded to void the contents of his stomach into the bowl. He spent a good minute or so hunched over the toilet, his back arcing and the muscles in his abdomen contracting painfully with every grisly retch. It sounded just as awful as it felt. When his heaving had mercifully died down, he slid down onto the floor against the sink cabinet and took a few laboured breaths. His throat felt raw, his stomach ached, and his mouth tasted like, well… vomit.

He groaned and stuck his tongue out between his teeth. He could really use something to drink right now, if only to wash away the atrocious taste assaulting his taste buds. As far as he was concerned, bile was something that no human being, or human-gem hybrid, should ever have the displeasure of tasting. He closed his eyes and allowed his head to loll back and rest against the cabinet just as the bathroom door opened. It was Amethyst.

“Yo, dude,” she sat down next to him on the floor, shoulder-to-shoulder, “That sounded nasty, you find another five year old burrito in my room or something?” she teased.

He turned his head ever so slightly and shot her an unamused look, eyes half-lidded. He must have looked absolutely pitiful, because she immediately changed her tack.

“You good?” she asked, placing an affectionate hand on his shoulder.

_‘No, I’m not_ good’, he thought bitterly.

“Never better” he responded. His sarcasm seemed to entertain her, at least, as she offered him an amused smile.

“Sure, dude, whatever you say.”

He reached up and gripped the countertop, using it as leverage to hoist himself onto his feet with a grunt. It was then that he finally got to see himself in the mirror. He was pale, haggard, and looked definitively miserable. He didn’t even have the energy to supress the crestfallen sigh that escaped him.

“You look awful. You sure you’re alright?” Amethyst inquired again.

“No.” He blurted out without thinking. He immediately regretted that.

“Somethin’ you wanna talk about?”

He froze. The thought of having to explain what had happened in the throne room unnerved him. The prospect of having to re-live that dreadful experience in White’s chamber all that time ago made his head spin and his blood run cold. Attempting to at least regain the appearance of composure, he straightened his back and placed his hands in his jacket pockets, as casual as anything. It was then that he remembered the car key in his right pocket.

“No.” He said bluntly, and headed out the bathroom door.

He had the keys to the Dondai; he had completely forgotten. Pearl had made a brief trip to Homeworld that morning in order to deliver them to him at his father’s request. ‘_Greg thought you might want to drive it down to the carwash instead of walking when you get back home_’ she had told him.

As soon as he exited the bathroom, Pearl turned towards him and opened her mouth to speak, but she was cut short by Amethyst calling to him from the doorway.

“Steven! Hey! Wait!”

He didn’t dare look back at her, he didn’t dare look Pearl in the face, nor Garnet. He hurriedly marched towards the door and swung it open purposefully, stepping out onto the porch and allowing it to swing shut behind him, eliciting a loud bang as the door slammed against the frame. He cringed, but didn’t allow it to stop his forward momentum. He rushed down the stairs onto the beach and strode over to the Dondai parked on the sand. Within seconds the engine was humming to life and he was driving away from the temple.

Just as he pulled onto the road, he retrieved his phone from his pocket, set it to silent, and placed it face-down on the passenger seat.

* * *

He had woken up at around 10am, turning over groggily and peeking up at the clock to check the time. Rubbing sleep from his eyes, he gazed out the clear glass doors leading to the balcony, allowing his bleary eyes time to adjust to the harsh morning light. He lay there, still and silent, chewing the inside of his lip. Today was the day, and he very much doubted the gems would allow him to slip past them and out the door. Not again.

On a normal morning, Steven’s hunger would have coerced him out of his bed by now, but he found he didn’t have much of an appetite. It was just past 10:30 when he finally managed to heave off his duvet and lug himself out of bed. Scanning the floor, he found the clothes he had unceremoniously strewn about his room the night before. His jacket and shirt were closest to his dresser, his sandals and trousers located at the halfway point between the top of the stairs and the chest of drawers. It painted a fairly vivid picture of last night’s dreary journey to bed. Bending over and picking up his crumpled shirt, he proceeded to administer the sniff test. So long as the smell of deodorant was slightly more prominent than the stench of sweat, he figured it was acceptable.

He buried his nose in the fabric and inhaled. Stale, slightly sweaty, just a hint of fresh cotton. Good enough. He was thankful Pearl wasn’t there to witness that, he wasn’t in the mood for a lecture on the importance of personal hygiene. He gathered up the rest of his clothes and got dressed. After pulling on his jacket and placing his hands in the pockets, he felt something sharp and metallic press into his skin. Steven instantly recognised the keys to his father’s Dondai.

_‘Shoot’_, he thought, ‘_I told Dad I would bring the car back in the morning._’

It would have to wait, he supposed. He made his way downstairs, partially supressing a yawn as he plodded down the final few steps. Garnet and Pearl were, as expected, standing in the kitchen waiting on his arrival.

“Mornin’, guys.”

“Good morning Steven!” Pearl greeted him cheerfully. She seemed to be a lot calmer now, thank the stars.

Steven stopped and glanced around, scanning the living room and the warp annex, surveying the kitchen and dining area. He realised after a few seconds what his subconscious mind had been searching for.

“Hey, where’s Amethyst?”

Garnet and Pearl shared a glance.

“In the temple.” Garnet answered plainly.

He wasn’t quite sure how to feel about that. Was she avoiding him? But why would she? He stood there for a moment, pondering the significance of her absence, and whether it really meant anything at all. Was he being paranoid? He was yanked back into reality as Pearl began to speak.

“Now that you’re up, why don’t Garnet and I make you breakfast? Anything you want!” It was evident in her exuberant tone that this was a pre-concocted plan intended to put him at ease, but her overly cheerful demeanour was beginning to unsettle him.

As nice as it would be to indulge in a stack of sugary waffles topped with whipped cream and all manner of ill-advised additions (a staple breakfast in the Universe household), he just didn’t have the stomach for it. He shook his head and chuckled stiffly.

“Thanks Pearl, but uh… I don’t really have much of an appetite.” In fact, he was beginning to feel slightly sick.

Pearl seemed to visibly deflate upon hearing those words, her bright expression fell and was immediately replaced by a look of concern. Understandably so, even Steven was aware of how out-of-character it was for him to turn down a meal, especially a meal prepared by Pearl. For someone who didn’t eat, she sure did have a knack for cooking.

“You need to eat.” Garnet urged. Steven detected a hint of worry in her tone.

“I will! Later. I just feel kinda sick, that’s all.” He assured them.

“Alright”, Pearl relented, letting out an exasperated sigh. Rounding the kitchen table and striding over to the sofa, she sat down and gestured for him to join her. They were planning on getting right into it, huh?

He traipsed over and sat next to her, maintaining a respectful distance, hands clasped in his lap. He bit his bottom lip as he watched Garnet approach and take her place on his other side. Once again he found himself sandwiched between two concerned gems intent on dragging answers out of him, with no discernible route of escape. Unless he planned on vaulting over the coffee table.

“So, about yesterday…” Pearl prompted, her voice gentle.

“Right…” Steven murmured. _‘This is about so much more than just yesterday’_, he thought, but once again kept it to himself.

“You ran away”, Garnet insisted.

_Ran away?_ Steven bristled. He didn’t quite understand why, but he felt insulted by that accusation.

“I didn’t run away!” he exclaimed indignantly, catching his companions off guard.

A glance at Pearl’s stunned expression was all it took for his frustration to immediately disperse, leaving him feeling embarrassed and intensely regretful for his little outburst. ‘_Nice one, Steven’,_ he chided himself.

“I went for a drive, I was gonna come back!” He stated truthfully, the thought of running away from home had never crossed his mind.

“You left without telling us why, you didn’t answer your phone for several hours. We had no way of knowing where you were or when you were coming back.” Garnet paused and looked at the floor, her voice softened. “_If_ you were coming back…”

“…Sorry.”

“Steven, it’s okay, we’re not mad at you.” Pearl reassured him gently. “We were worried about you, that’s all.”

He almost wanted to ask her why.

“We just want to know what happened. Amethyst said you were acting strange before you left.” Garnet added.

“Yeah, I uh, I was sick… puked in the toilet.” he admitted.

“We heard” Garnet said.

His cheeks flushed.

“Oh.”

“But that doesn’t explain why you ran out, Steven. Did something happen while you were on Homeworld?” Pearl questioned, unaware of how squarely she had hit the nail on the head.

‘_Oh, something _happened_ alright_’, he thought. There was no dodging that question. He could lie, of course, but Steven was a horrendous liar, and he was already starting to feel anxiety simmering inside his chest at the mere mention of Homeworld. He wouldn’t be able to hide his shaky mental state whilst he was pinned here like this. His stomach began to ache again.

“Yeah. Something happened.”

Both Pearl and Garnet leaned forward expectantly, but remained silent.

“I don’t even know what it was, I was perfectly fine one moment and then… I wasn’t.”

He swallowed hard and willed himself to continue.

“I just- I dunno, I froze up? White Diamond came close to me and… Well, she reached towards me, and her nails, they- I’ve been close to her so many times and I’m around her all the time lately but-“

He cut himself off, his words were already becoming frantic, he wasn’t forming proper sentences, and he was barely a few seconds in! Why was he getting so worked up about this? Why had he been so convinced that White Diamond was going to hurt him? Panic rising in his chest, he allowed every disorganised thought to spill out of his mouth unbidden.

“Suddenly I was terrified of her! I couldn’t breathe and I felt all sweaty and my heart was beating so fast I could feel it thumping inside my head and- and… I was so sure she was gonna hurt me! I thought she was gonna do something _awful_ to me and I couldn’t do anything to stop it because she’s- augh!”

His face fell into his hands. He had to make a conscious effort not to picture the incident in his mind, to prevent himself from spiralling and trapping himself in that memory again.

“I thought she was gonna- I thought-“, he paused for just a moment, hesitated to speak his next words.

“I guess I felt like I was going to die. I felt like she was going to kill me.”

This time it was Pearl who wrapped her arm around his shoulder. Garnet placed a hand on his back. They seemed unsure of what to say.

“I know it’s stupid, she’s different now, and she wouldn’t hurt me, not anymore… But…”

“Steven… Has she done something to you? Before? Has White Diamond… hurt you?” Pearl asked, almost pleading. She sounded so gentle, so reserved, and she had the patience of a saint, but there was desperation in her voice.

“Not… recently.” He answered.

Pearl and Garnet shared an uneasy glance.

“What do you mean by that?” Pearl pressed.

She needed to know. He needed to tell her. He needed to tell all of them, he should have done so long, long ago. But he had been prepared to carry his burdens alone for the rest of his life, to allow his family their hard-won happily ever after. He was fine with suffering alone, he had done it for so long. He was fine with burying his traumas, he had become so practiced at it. He had dug himself so deeply into this pit of denial and repression that he could barely see the sky above him; a pinprick of light surrounded on all sides by dark, muddy walls. Impossible to scale, impossible to escape. Could he really be so selfish as to drag his family down into the pit with him, just so he didn’t have to reside there alone?

He looked to Garnet. She was still seated in the same position, hand firmly placed on his back. She had begun to move her thumb back and forth against the fabric of his jacket in a stroking motion. It was a subtle action, but it was beginning to ease his tension. Though he could sense that Garnet herself was thrumming with nervous energy. He wasn’t sure if he owed that to the fact that he knew her so well, or if it was simply his hyper-empathy kicking in.

He then looked to Pearl, who met his gaze. Her eyes were misty and her mouth was turned down into a slight frown. Her concern was palpable, and he found it equal parts heart-warming and agonising that she so earnestly worried for his wellbeing. She gave his shoulder a squeeze.

He would tell them, here and now, whether he wanted to or not or whether he thought it would be right or wrong to do so. They were asking, and he was going to oblige. After causing them so much trouble, it was the least he could do. There was just one more thing, if he was going to tell them, he wanted to tell all of them. Together.

He turned to Garnet.

“Could you go get Amethyst?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think all of us here are mature enough to admit that we use the sniff test to decide whether to re-wear clothes
> 
> Next chapter, The Dreaded Talk begins


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh dang i forgot the chapter notes when i first published asdfrgt  
This chapter was so hard to finish, I kept chopping and changing and rearranging stuff  
But here it is

With Garnet gone searching for Amethyst, Steven had been left alone with Pearl. They sat in uncomfortable silence, with a million unanswered questions and countless untapped emotions hanging in the air. His gaze was fixated on the temple door, and he remained in his hunched position with his hands tightly clasped in his lap. His foot began tapping nervously, all of its own accord.

“I’m sure Garnet will be back with Amethyst in no time”, Pearl attempted to reassure him, but it did little to alleviate the tension he felt gripping his whole body.

“Do you think she’s mad at me?” he asked, somewhat childishly.

Pearl sighed at that. It seemed to him that she honestly didn’t know the answer.

“It can be… hard to tell how Amethyst will react to things sometimes.” Came Pearl’s honest response.

He turned to look at her, his expression somewhat resembling that of a kicked puppy.

She placed a hand on his shoulder and offered a sympathetic smile.

“Everything is going to be okay, Steven.”

Everything was certainly not okay. Every second he spent waiting he became more and more paranoid. Where is she? Why wasn’t she with Garnet and Pearl when he came back home? Did she not care? Was she angry? Did she simply think the others were overreacting? Had he majorly screwed up? Did he hurt her feelings?

He shouldn’t have ran out. He should have just played it off like he had eaten a bad burrito and gotten sick. He messed up badly and now he was paying for it, and now Amethyst is hiding from him and he’s going to have to reveal his deepest, darkest secrets to the people closest to him because he couldn’t just plaster a stupid grin on his big dumb face and get on with it.

Tears pricked at his eyes.

It was all so stupid. He was stupid. He stupidly let himself get caught up in his own pain and made everyone else suffer as a result. For so long he strived and strived to be better, to get stronger, to grow up faster so that he wouldn’t be a burden on everyone around him. And here he was burdening them all over again like he hadn’t made any progress at all. Like he was still that stupid, helpless little kid. Way in over his head, too insistent proving he could be an asset to the team, and completely blind to the hole he had dug himself into. Where did he get off acting like he was Saviour of the Galaxy?

‘_Idiot, idiot, idiot!_’ his inner voice chanted.

Unintentionally, a muted whimper escaped him. As cruel as his own mind was being, a bitter, jaded part of him resented that he had to go through it all. He longed to believe that he hadn’t done anything to deserve any of it. Entrenched in his own toxic thoughts, he barely registered Pearl’s presence anymore. That was, until he felt her grip on his shoulder tighten ever so slightly.

Easing him back, Pearl silently encouraged him to unfurl from his hunched position and lean against the cushion. He allowed her to guide him without saying a word. He settled back against the sofa, and found it to be much more agreeable. Comfortable, even. He looked over at his guardian with teary eyes. She gazed back at him with a gentleness and compassion that made his heart feel like it was going to burst. He desperately wanted to wrap his arms tightly around her, nestle his face into the crook of her neck and cry and cry and cry until he couldn’t cry any longer.

He wouldn’t allow himself to. Not yet. So instead he settled on shuffling closer to her, squishing his chubby body up against her lithe frame and resting his head on her shoulder. Pearl responded by swinging her arm over him and resting her chin atop his head, amongst his unruly curls.

“Just be patient.” She whispered.

And there they sat in silence once again.

This time, Steven chose to focus on the warmth and familiarity of his environment. The floorboards, the stairs, the shelves above him, the coffee table directly in front of him; it was all made of wood. Natural, familiar, organic. It made him think of the Earth.

He was surrounded by soft browns and oranges, mid-morning sunlight permeating the room. He watched dust particles flitting about in mid-air, seemingly levitating by a will of their own, illuminated by the sunbeams that poured in through the windows. He felt the fabric of the seat cushion, soft and supportive. He listened to the ticking of the clock, steady and rhythmic. Sitting in the comforting embrace of his trusted guardian, his tension slowly eased with each passing second.

Garnet and Amethyst would be back in due time. For now, he found was happy to wait.

* * *

Steven wasn’t sure of how much time had passed between the time Garnet began her search and the moment she arrived back in his living room, with Amethyst in tow. He hadn’t been counting. Despite how comfortable he was, he knew he shouldn’t allow himself to fall asleep, so he had found himself floating in that hazy space between wakefulness and slumber where everything feels fuzzy and weightless. He was feeling completely at ease.

That was, until the temple door opened with a loud chime and had him nearly jumping out of his own skin. Pearl’s grip on him tightened, as if she were fearful he may bolt again. Did she really have so little faith in him?

“Garnet, you’re back!” Pearl called. “And Amethyst, so nice of you to finally join us.”

Not long ago, that would have been enough to cause a spat between the two, but Amethyst simply waved a dismissive hand in Pearl’s direction.

“Yeah, yeah…”

Steven sat upright and watched nervously as Amethyst made her way over, perching on the coffee table directly in front of him, their knees just barely touching. She looked unamused, but contrary to his fears there wasn’t a hint of anger in her expression. She leaned back, propping herself up with her hands. It seemed to him as if she were waiting on something.

“Listen, Amethyst I-“

She cut him off.

“Pfft, c’mon dude, you don’t gotta apologise to me.”

“Huh?” he blinked.

“Garnet told me what’s up. You finally ready to talk?” she asked, a sympathetic smile gracing her features.

“Yeah.”

He looked at Garnet and nodded hesitantly, she took her place at his side once more.

“Okay,” he took a shaky breath and released it slowly. “There’s something I have to tell you guys, but it might be… hard to listen to.”

All three gems remained silent, which he took as his cue to continue.

“A long time ago, White Diamond did something to me. She… she hurt me. Badly.”

Pearl nodded grimly, as did Garnet. Amethyst leaned forward silently.

All that remained now was to tell the whole sordid tale, sparing no detail, no matter how painful. The only way Steven felt he could get through this was to tell it from the beginning, no breaks, and no interruptions. He was terrified of experiencing another episode like he had back at the palace, but perhaps another flashback was unavoidable.

“I don’t know how much you guys remember, but, it happened when we were in White’s head… when she was controlling all of you. You and the Diamonds. All of you, you were lifeless and you had no colour. You all spoke with her voice and- and she _taunted_ me. She wouldn’t listen to a word I was saying, I kept telling her I wasn’t Pink Diamond, but she just wouldn’t believe me!”

Steven remembered how frustrating it had been, to have his personhood denied and invalidated by someone who absolutely refused to listen to reason. The worst part about it was that it had begun to work on him. When he argued with her, his voice would waver pathetically, and he was barely able to convince _himself_ to believe in his words, let alone White Diamond. For a moment, he had doubted he was even himself at all.

_‘Don’t you know things about her that you couldn’t possibly know?’_

He knows he isn’t Pink Diamond, or Rose Quartz. But that doesn’t make it any less painful to recall. It was a terrible, eerie feeling to imagine that everything he is was nothing more than a ruse concocted by a cowardly ruler in order to hide from the mistakes of her past. Mistakes he had to pay for. Mistakes he still strives to correct.

“I… I think I still have some of Mom’s memories.”

He made a point to not look at Pearl’s face. She had asked him, once, if he had any of Rose’s memories. She had her answer now.

“I could feel her feelings, I could see what she saw. It all seemed so… real to me… White knew that. She thought- She said Pink had just ‘embedded herself in a human child’. In me.”

He felt a twinge in his belly. Back then, Steven hadn’t even been a consideration for White. The entire time she spoke, she addressed his gem, dismissed his human half. He was nothing but a carrier. A vessel containing her precious Starlight, and if he had to serve as collateral damage in order for her to get her back, then so be it. He was just a human being, after all. A worthless lower life form.

“I could barely even think straight. I didn’t even try to run when she- she picked me up… Between her fingers, like this.” He mimicked the position of her hand. He wasn’t sure how appropriate it was to provide visual aids in such a nonchalant manner, but he had to do something to distract himself from his creeping sense of dread. Had to act like he was keeping it together.

It didn’t work, of course.

“She held me in her fist. I couldn’t move, no matter how much I tried I couldn’t break free. She held me close to her face and- the light was so bright and her nails were so long and sharp and- I…”

He swallowed hard. He had managed to maintain his composure up until now, but he knew it wasn’t going to be easy from this point onwards. Already, he was beginning to feel a tingling anxiety in his gut. Already, he was seeing flashes of white and grey and black and pink. He saw her massive eyes looking straight through him, he saw her disquieting smile revealing just how little she cared about the suffering she was about to inflict. He tried to reason with himself, urged himself to just come out and say it plainly, in as few words as possible so he can get it over and done with. But he knew that wasn’t possible. Once he got started he doubted he could stop himself from being consumed by his memories. How horrible, how painful, how terrifying, how utterly traumatic it had been.

“She pulled up my shirt, and- I don’t know how but I _knew_. I knew exactly what she was going to do. I couldn’t stop it, I tried I-“

His hand went to his stomach, settling on his gem. He looked to each of the others, one-by-one. Their concern was palpable. It made him feel like he wanted to throw up again.

“She came at me with her massive, sharp nails and- and she-“

He remembered the pain, now. The sharp, stabbing ache as White Diamond forced her vile ebony claws between his gem and the flesh it was embedded in. The growing, thrumming anguish that spread from his belly, overtook his entire body and turned his mind to static as she pulled and pulled and pulled and wouldn’t _stop_ pulling. He remembered how he trembled, how he was so stricken with terror and pain that he couldn’t even attempt to struggle against her grip. He could do nothing but shut his eyes tightly, clench his teeth and accept his fate. He truly believed in that moment that he was going to die.

He felt oddly numb. He took advantage of it, and said what needed to be said.

“She pulled out my gem.” He uttered.

Garnet’s grip on the cushion tightened.

Pearl’s hand flew to her mouth, her eyes blown wide.

“She did _what_?!” Amethyst shrieked.

The Diamond was pulled free from his flesh, and everything went dark.

“I- I blacked out, and when I woke up Connie was- My body was there with her and she was saying something and I couldn’t hear her and…”

Everything felt wrong.

“My gem was in White Diamond’s hand. It started glowing and floating, it was reforming and-“

His voice wavered.

“I saw Pink Diamond, a-and I saw Mom but-“

Despite his distress, he couldn’t help but feel strangely relieved as he spoke his next words.

“But then it turned into… me.”

He remembered watching with rapt attention as his gem cycled through its previous incarnations, his mind racing, his heart desperately pleading, _please_ _don’t do this to me. _But then he appeared, and his vision was split in two.

“And it was like I was in two places at once, I could see me- my gem looking at me and I- he could see me, I mean, him and- ugh.”

He stumbled on his pronoun usage. In his current state, now that he was whole again, he found it so difficult to conceptualise the idea of existing as two separate beings. He carried both their memories; he could picture the events that took place through two different perspectives. Trying to explain it was confusing and awkward and disorganised, because no matter which perspective he used it didn’t feel quite right. Neither of his halves had really been Steven, and yet at the same time they had been. It felt wrong to pick a side, but he had to choose a perspective and stick with it if he wanted his explanation to make any sense.

“I was split in two. This gem- this _pink_ Steven, he was just…me. He just stood there and he looked at me and I _knew_ I needed to be with him again. It was all I could think about.”

He paused, lowered his gaze to his feet.

“But I was so weak, I tried to walk towards him but I couldn’t even stand up anymore. My head was fuzzy, I could barely breathe, I was crying and I couldn’t stop- I was sick- no, I was dying. I know I was.”

He would never forget that feeling as long as he lived.

“But Connie- Connie carried me! She lifted me and she carried me! She saved my life... If she hadn’t been there I would’ve-“

He stopped himself. There was no point on focusing on that now. At least this story had a happy ending.

“But Connie handed me over to him, and he held me, and I hugged him and he hugged me back.” A shaky grin forced its way on to his face, he could do nothing to stop it despite knowing how odd it was. “And we spun and jumped and laughed and laughed and-“

He was laughing now, slightly deliriously. Just like he had back then. He knew the Gems were looking at him like he’d gone mad, but he didn’t care. He couldn’t help it. The pure euphoria he had felt upon being reunited with himself was intoxicating. His utter relief upon having his deepest, darkest fears assuaged, the vindication that came from having his identity and personhood finally, _finally_ substantiated after all that time spent doubting and questioning - it was almost too much to handle. He felt a fluttering sensation in his chest and he swore he could see stars. Tears had begun welling up in his eyes.

He stood up and swung his arms out in an exuberant motion.

“And I was me again! I-”

And he was okay now! And everything was fine! And now the Gems knew, and now they knew that it all worked out in the end. And now he knew he never had to worry about it or think about it ever again. He never had to worry about how utterly alone he had been, about how his friends were turned against him and watched on with blank, expressionless gazes as he was horribly maimed. Or about how terribly helpless he had felt as he crawled on the floor, breathless, begging, ‘_please, I need it’_. He didn’t have to think about how messed up it was that he would be dead now if Connie hadn’t been there. Or how overwhelmingly terrifying it was to stare death in the face and know there wasn’t a single thing you could do about it, to imagine what death _felt_ like and force yourself to come to terms with the idea of ceasing to exist at only 14 years old, and to submit to the concept of losing all of your progress and your memories and all the love and joy you had ever felt to the endless, uncaring void of space for the rest of eternity.

He probably should have known that the brief wave of euphoria he felt moments ago was a precursor to something sinister, but he was still left blindsided by how his emotional state seemed to jump tracks from one peak to another. Like a switch had been flipped, he was suddenly overcome by sorrow and fear.

Steven didn’t quite know when it had started, but he was trembling now. A few stray tears slipped down his cheeks.

“Steven…” Pearl prompted, her voice quiet, yet thick with emotion. She reached out and gently grasped his arm.

“I was so _scared_.” He squeaked, and the dam broke.

He choked back a sob, and Pearl quickly pulled him down onto the seat next to her, wrapping her arms around him tightly.

“It’s okay, I’m here.” She cooed.

He buried his face in her chest and finally allowed himself to fall apart. After years of holding himself together for the sake of supporting the weight of an entire Empire, a lifetime of holding together a broken family at the price of his own mental stability.

He broke down sobbing, tightly gripping the hard-light fabric of Pearl’s jacket. Like a child grasping at his mother’s clothing. He sniffled and trembled and sucked air into his lungs sharply between every woeful, blubbering wail. His chest felt tight, his body felt weak, and his shoulders shook with each mournful cry. The Gems probably had questions for him, their own thoughts and feelings to share, but that would have to wait. He was going to cry and howl and weep for as long as he needed, until he couldn’t any longer.

Garnet and Amethyst turned their gazes to the floor, powerless to do anything but bear witness to the unravelling of a long-neglected tapestry of tempestuous emotions and unresolved trauma. They remained in their places, didn't move, and didn't make a sound.

Pearl’s grip on the boy tightened. She had begun murmuring words of consolation in his ear, so quiet and so gentle that only Steven knew she was speaking at all. He couldn’t pick up on exactly what she was saying over the sound of his own blubbering, but her even, feathery tone was enough to soothe his tormented heart and bring his cloudy mind back into focus, back into the present moment.

After what felt like an eternity, his fitful sobs began to slow, becoming less and less frequent until they had stopped completely. His grip on Pearl’s jacket loosened, his shoulders relaxing as his breathing evened out. He loosely wrapped his arms around her waist and rested his forehead on her shoulder. Eyes closed, he took in a long, shaky breath, and released it slowly.

He sat there in silence for a few moments.

“You’re safe.” Garnet assured.

He felt Amethyst place a hand on his thigh.

“Yeah dude, you’re totally fine! You don’t have to worry about White Diamond.”

But he did have to worry about White Diamond, because he would have to face her again, and he would have to work alongside her, and he would have to explain himself to her and the other Diamonds. He needs to be okay with being around her because he needs to help her dismantle the Empire and liberate every gem across the galaxy and usher in a new era of peace and freedom across the farthest reaches of the cosmos. He had work to do, and he needed the Diamonds in order to do it.

This discussion was far from over.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter we'll get the Gems' thoughts and feelings on all this  
I felt like it was important to not have them cutting in with dialogue or actions during Steven's speech, as it would be messy to handle that many characters at once and wouldn't flow nearly as well  
Poor Garnet and Amethyst, Pearl gets the spotlight a bit here haha, but having them all jump in to comfort him would feel kind of awkward and messy from a writing perspective (keeping track of their positions etc), and for some reason it just feels right to me that Pearl would be the one he clings onto in this moment


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oof, this one was surprisingly difficult to write, I think because it's kind of an interlude that bridges the gap between pre-established story beats I had already planned out  
It's a short one, too, sorry folks

After taking a few moments to collect himself, Steven had finally detached himself from Pearl, an action which had ended up being more difficult than he had expected. Regardless, he had now settled into a more relaxed position, leaning against the backrest with his arms idly resting over his belly. Though crying had taken a lot out of him, he found himself feeling oddly refreshed.

“Feeling any better?” asked Amethyst.

He gave her a weak smile, hesitant and wavering, but genuine.

“Yeah, a little.”

He looked to Garnet, who now sat reclined with her arms firmly crossed over her chest. She was staring into space, her jaw firmly set. It seemed to him as if she were thinking deeply about something. Something important.

“Uh, Garnet? Something wrong?”

“It’s nothing, Steven, don’t worry about it.” She offered with a gentle smile, but he could tell something was off.

He cocked his head at her, but she took no notice of it and returned to her uneasy meditation. He decided not to press her on the matter, he didn’t have the energy for it. Rather than endure another stretch of uncomfortable silence, Steven stood up, stretched and let out an exaggeratedly relaxed sigh.

“I’m gonna go to the bathroom, be back in just a sec.”

He scooted past Pearl’s legs and rounded the coffee table, taking particular notice of the fact that the Gems were no longer eyeing his every movement. He thanked the stars for that. Shutting the bathroom door gently behind him, he stood in front the sink and examined himself in the mirror. He was certainly looking better than the last time he had seen his reflection, though that was a low bar to pass. His eyes were red and still slightly wet, and his cheeks were flushed, but those were easy fixes. After splashing his face with cold water and wiping it down with a towel, he gave himself another once-over. His face wasn’t nearly as red, and his eyes looked much brighter. He felt fresher, too. _‘Not bad for someone who just had and intense emotional breakdown’_, he mused.

Just as he approached the door and placed his hand on the knob, he paused. Through the door, he could hear the Gems speaking in low, fevered whispers. He had trouble deciphering anything meaningful, but one word in particular rang out clearly; ‘_Homeworld’_. He supressed a frustrated groan and stepped out into the living room just in time to hear Garnet make a declaration, her tone resolute.

“He can’t go there anymore.”

“But Garnet, you can’t just-!” Pearl started, but was promptly cut off.

“She tried to kill him! She tore him apart!”

“I know! But-“

“But what?! Are we on different planets right now?! Steven _just_ told you-” Amethyst jumped in to the mix, only to be interrupted by Pearl.

“That’s not the point, Amethyst!”

“White Diamond can’t be trusted!” Garnet shouted.

“We don’t have to trust _her_!” Pearl countered, eliciting an irate response from Amethyst.

“What?! It’s like you don’t even care about-!”

“Of course I care, Amethyst! But you need to listen to me-!”

Pearl was interrupted once again. By whom, Steven couldn’t even tell anymore. In their shock and fury, the Gems’ voices had begun overlapping one another, each gem trying fiercely to overpower the others in sheer volume. Pearl was gesticulating desperately, Amethyst’s arms were flailing wildly and Garnet stood towering over the both of them. Steven tried to interject, to calm them down, to stop their arguing, but to no avail. On multiple occasions he tried calling one of their names, but none of them took notice. He pleaded for them to just restrain themselves for a moment and let him speak, but his voice was too quiet and hesitant, muted by his subconscious fear that they may turn around and snap at him next, just as they snapped and snarled at each other.

It was beginning to give him a headache.

He decided to opt for a different tactic. Taking in a deep breath, he screwed his eyes shut and let loose.

“WOULD YOU GUYS CUT IT OUT?!” He bellowed, shoulders tense and hands tightly balled into fists.

That got their attention. They froze in place, heads snapping round to look at him and still holding onto their dramatic postures, like a still frame from some ridiculous comedy-drama. Steven probably would have found it funny if he weren’t so incensed.

“Believe me, I know how messed up this is! I don’t exactly feel good about being around White Diamond either! But you can’t just stop me from doing my job! If you stop me from seeing her, you’ll be ruining all the progress I’ve made! I _need_ to keep an eye on the Diamonds! I need to keep them on the right track! I have to be there to make everything better!”

Garnet and Pearl shared a glance and immediately deflated, clearly ashamed of their behaviour. Amethyst gawked at him, concern and indignant anger evident in her expression. She squared her shoulders and a determined look crossed her features.

“I’m gonna go over there and give that oversized light bulb a piece of my mind!” she roared, jabbing a thumb towards her chest. She leapt off the table and began stalking towards the warp pad.

“Amythest!” Garnet shouted after her impatiently.

She brushed it off, refusing to slow her march.

“Amethyst, please…!” Steven called out, pleading and desperate.

She stopped.

“I know you guys are worried about me, but… This is just something I need to do.”

Amethyst turned to face him, and they held eye contact for a long, tense moment. Try as she might, she was unable to hold onto her anger for long in the face of Steven’s relentless puppy-dog eyes. (Those had been his saving grace on more than one occasion.) Amethyst sighed loudly and relaxed her posture, head lolling back and her shoulders slumping.

“Ugh, fine…! You’re too good for those Diamonds, man.” She muttered bitterly, but there was an undertone of sisterly affection in her voice.

“That’s why they need him.” Garnet added dejectedly, realisation dawning on her. She sounded utterly defeated.

Steven looked to the floor, and a dispirited silence settled over the room. He knew that the Gems wouldn’t be happy letting him run off to Homeworld and get close to White after hearing what she had done, but what other choice did he have?

Pearl came up behind him and placed her hands gently on his shoulders, then addressed the room.

“I think we should give Steven a break for now. This morning has certainly been… intense. So, why don’t we regroup and continue this discussion later?” Her tone was airy and casual, but sophisticated all the same.

“Sure thing, P.” Amethyst shot a peace sign in Steven’s direction. “See ya later Steve-O, try to take it easy.”

She headed towards the front door and playfully punched him on the arm as she passed, and he responded with a lopsided smile.

“Later, Amethyst.”

Garnet nodded at Pearl and gave a hum of agreement, turning towards the temple and taking a few steps before pausing momentarily and turning on her heel. She approached Steven and stood in front of him, placing an affectionate hand on his upper arm.

“I- _We,_” she looked pointedly at Pearl, “apologise for getting so worked up, for arguing amongst ourselves at a time like this. It won’t happen again.”

“It’s okay Garnet, really.” Steven assured, offering her a placid smile.

“It’s not okay.” She countered. “Steven-” She began, her voice strained under the weight of untold worries. She stopped herself. 

“No, Pearl is right, we should discuss this later.”

Steven nodded, and after a moment’s silence, spoke.

“Love you.”

Garnet smirked at that.

“Love you more.” she returned smoothly. She tousled his hair, further mussing up his already dishevelled locks. He didn’t mind, of course, letting out an amused snort.

Pearl remained firmly in her place as she and Steven saw Garnet off with a wave. Once the temple door had closed and she was certain the others were out of earshot, Pearl smoothly twirled him around so that they were face to face. Taken aback by his sudden and unexpected repositioning, he looked at her with an expression of utter confusion.

“Uh?”

“Listen, Steven, you don’t have to keep going to Homeworld if you don’t want to. I just-” Her words came out frantic, as if she were desperately trying to make amends for something. He interjected, eager to prevent another one of her signature long-winded rants.

“Pearl, I _want_ to go back. Or, well, I _have_ to go back.”

“But if you don’t feel safe there-!”

“_Pearl_.” He warned. He really wasn’t in the mood for this right now, especially considering Pearl herself had been the one to suggest he take a break.

She clamped her mouth shut, and after a few moments let out a defeated sigh.

“I just… want you to know you have a choice, that’s all. Garnet wanted to stop you from going, but… I wanted you to choose for yourself.”

“I know…” He sighed, then gave her a grateful smile. “Thanks, Pearl.”

Despite the unpleasantness that had arisen from it, he genuinely was grateful that she had stood up to defend his autonomy. It seemed significant to him that it had been Pearl, considering his long, complicated history of fretting over her ability to see him as his own person, independent from his mother. He was sure now that she saw him as he saw himself, a new, unique and fully realised human-gem hybrid with his own feelings, his own memories, and his own dreams and aspirations. Nonetheless, despite all the time that had passed and all the growth they had experienced, the subject remained sore spot for the both of them.

Steven pondered it for a moment, and dared to broach the topic. To poke at this long-bandaged wound to test if it had really been healed, or if it had simply been covered over and forgotten. Just as Pearl slid her hands off his shoulders and began to walk away, he spoke, stopping her in her tracks.

“Hey, uh…”

She turned around, but he was no longer facing her.

“Does it… bother you?”

She cocked her head, puzzled.

“What?”

His back still turned, Steven peered at her over his shoulder.

“About Mom being gone for good? My gem… it’s just me in there now.”

He knew Pearl had made great strides in her efforts to overcome the loss of Rose Quartz, but he still felt a nagging doubt that perhaps she believed some part of her still existed within him, that that belief was part of her coping strategy. He felt guilty for even asking, selfish, even. But he needed to know. He needed to know that he was enough for her.

Pearl’s face fell, and he looked away. She didn’t speak, and the silence was unbearable. He felt tears welling up in his eyes for the second time that morning. ‘_I shouldn’t have said that.’ _He thought remorsefully. Just as he had opened his mouth to utter an apology, he felt a pair of slender arms envelop him from behind.

“I made my peace with that a long time ago.”

Her voice was delicate and soothing, without a hint of disappointment or resentment to be found.

“You’re not… disappointed? I’m all that’s left.”

She turned him around in her arms, looking him square in the face. Her expression was tender and peaceful, but carried a subtle hint of pain.

“I’m… sad, sometimes, that she’s gone. I always will be. But I’m not disappointed, I could never be disappointed that you came into my life.”

“And that’s… enough for you?”

Once again, Pearl pulled him into a tight embrace.

“Oh Steven, you’re more than enough.”

That was all he needed to hear. His chest welled up with a potent mix of relief and subdued joy, a sensation that swelled up from somewhere deep inside him and spilled out in the form of fresh tears. He sniffled, took in halting breaths that wavered as he exhaled, but he didn’t sob, didn’t whimper or wail as he did before.

Pulling back, Pearl placed a hand tenderly on his cheek and used her thumb to wipe a tear from the corner of his eye. He held her gaze for a long, comfortable moment. Steven remembered how she used to look at him with a subtle longing in her eyes, a hint of sadness, a yearning for something she had lost long ago. He knew now that she was thinking of his mother in those moments.

That longing was gone now. It had disappeared a long time ago. All that remained was maternal affection; gentle and immensely powerful all at once. Rose Quartz was his mother in name only. As far as he was concerned, Pearl had been his mother in every way other way possible.

Sometimes, he sorely wished he could call her ‘Mom’.

He took a breath and steadied himself, fiddling with the key in his jacket pocket.

“Okay, I should really bring the car back to Dad now.”

“Ah, right, of course.” There was a hint of disappointment in her voice, but she stood back and gave him a reassuring smile.

He made his way over to the door, shooting Pearl a final glance as he opened it.

“I’ll be back later!” he called cheerfully.

“I know, Steven.” Pearl reciprocated, her expression and her voice both refreshingly tranquil.

She trusted that he would return this time, and that was enough for him.

* * *

It had been a relaxing drive, as short as it was. It was a mild late-autumn day in Beach City, and the cool sea breeze wafted through the open window of the Dondai, swirling around the interior of the car and enveloping Steven in its familiar embrace. The air carried with it a multiplicity of scents and flavours from across the boardwalk, as well as the aroma of the sea, salty and revitalising. 

As he often did, Steven found his father at the car-wash, sat in the back of his van and idly dabbling at the strings of his aged acoustic guitar. He had pulled on a green knitted sweater over his tank top to shield himself from the chilly autumn air. As he pulled in to the driveway, Steven was slightly disappointed to see his dad cease his playing in order to turn and give him his full attention. He could listen to him play that thing all day, and he found himself sorely missing the sound of it when it stopped.

Stepping out of the Dondai, Steven locked the door behind him and greeted his father genially.

“Hey, Dad!”

Greg responded with a breezy smile.

“Hey, Schtu-ball, how ya been?”

Steven slumped down next to him with a thud, the van’s suspension creaking and bobbing as a result of the impact.

“Emotionally exhausted…” He answered sluggishly, though he was in relatively good spirits, he exaggerated his tired tone for dramatic effect in an attempt to maintain a casual, pleasant atmosphere.

“Is this a gem thing?” Greg asked, in that exact same concerned tone of voice Steven had heard from the Gems earlier. He was getting tired of hearing it, if he were honest.

“It’s always a gem thing, Dad.” he responded exasperatedly.

“Do you need to talk about-” He had tried to ask, but was immediately interrupted as Steven flopped backwards with a fatigued groan.

“Alright, alright, I can take a hint.” He raised his hands in defeat.

“Sorry, Dad, I just think I’ve had enough of ‘talking about it’ for now. Today has been pretty tiring, and it’s still only morning!”

“I think it’s nearly noon, if that makes you feel any better.” Greg offered.

“It doesn’t.” Steven sighed.

“It’s fine if you don’t wanna talk about it, but… well, you know your dad worries about you, buddy, that’s all. I just need to know you’re gonna be okay, that you can handle whatever this ‘magical destiny’ or whatever throws at you.”

Steven turned his head, his cheek pressing against the cool metal floor of the van. He met his father’s gaze and slapped on the most reassuring smile he could muster.

“I know, I’ll be fine. I’ll figure it out, I promise.”

“Well, before you do that, how about hangin’ out for a while and spending some quality time with your _cool_ dad?” He proposed with a cheesy grin.

“Yeah, that… that sounds good.”

Greg promptly resumed playing, right where he had left off. Steven remained on his back, placing his hands behind his head. He listened to his father experimentally plucking at the strings, occasionally strumming two or three chords in succession, muddling his way through half-completed melodies. At times he would give up on composing new tunes and play a familiar song, other times he would make it through a measure or two of a tune he wasn’t practiced at and fumble with his fingering. At one point he had offered to hand the guitar over, but Steven had shook his head and responded, “I like listening to you play.”

And so Steven closed his eyes and allowed himself to forget the world, blocking out everything but the sound of his father’s calloused fingers deftly manipulating the strings, the feeling of the breeze that rustled the changing leaves and carried the seagulls high above the waves, and the familiar, refreshing scent of the ocean.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Can you tell that I absolutely adore Pearl? asdfghfghj  
Next chapter, more Greg, and more one-on-one talks with various characters  
Also, the next chapter will be longer than this one, promise


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oof, this one took ages, but I really wanted it to be longer, and better, than the last chapter asdfrgth  
Also, unrelated, but I finally experienced the joys of art theft (someone reposted a comic I drew on insta without permission)  
Does this make me a real, bona fide internet artist now?  
Look ma, I made it

Still laying in the back of his father’s van, Steven had become absorbed in a hazy daydream, lazily swinging his legs back and forth and providing unprompted accompaniment to a few of his father’s songs in the form of melodic humming. Occasionally, he would murmur a few lyrics, but he never managed to finish the verse, each time slipping back into a drowsy haze and returning to his absentminded humming. He felt pleasantly detached from the world, only occasionally cracking open an eye to peek up at the man sitting next to him. Greg himself seemed to be completely engrossed in his music, pausing only to wave at the odd familiar passer-by.

Regrettably, his organic body found a way to interrupt his blissful repose. Steven found himself rudely uprooted from his pleasant daydreams by his own traitorous stomach, which had now begun growling emphatically at him. His appetite had come back with a vengeance, and was now angrily reminding him of the fact that he hadn’t eaten since yesterday. He tried his best to ignore it at first, but he had already been pulled into the waking world, and returning to his previous dreamlike state was proving difficult.

His stomach’s incessant rumbling had even been loud enough to alert his dad, who paused, his fingers still resting on the strings.

“Woah, uh, getting hungry or something there buddy?” He teased, quirking an eyebrow.

Steven sighed and pulled himself into a sitting position.

“Yeah, I guess I haven’t eaten in a while, huh?”

“What do you mean by ‘a while’?” Asked Greg, slightly apprehensive.

“Uh…” Steven flushed slightly, he knew Dad wasn’t going to like the answer to that question, and he certainly didn’t like the idea of making him worry over nothing. “Since yesterday?”

“Yesterday… evening?” Pressed his father, cautiously hopeful.

“Yesterday… morning. Early afternoon, probably?” Steven admitted reluctantly. Now that he had said it out loud, it dawned on him that he had gone nearly 24 hours without food. That definitely didn’t sound good.

Greg’s eyes widened.

“Steven, you need to eat.” He urged in that half-loving, half-chiding, paternal tone of voice that squeezed at Steven’s heart.

“I know! I dunno, I just haven’t had much of an appetite lately… But I’m hungry now, that’s a good sign, right?”

Putting his guitar to the side, Greg pulled his wallet from his back pocket and retrieved a random assortment of bills and coins.

“Does this happen a lot?”

“No! Just… these past few weeks, sometimes I don’t really have an appetite, that’s all.”

Oh boy, he was making it sound even worse.

“Go get something from the boardwalk, doesn’t matter how greasy or unhealthy, as long as it’s food.” Greg instructed, his lips turned down into a concerned frown. He pressed the cash into Steven’s palm, closing both hands around his son’s and squeezing gently.

Steven glanced down the road, which led directly to the boardwalk, and his attention was drawn to the massive steel donut in the left side of his peripheral vision.

“How about something from the Big Donut?” He turned back to his dad with a nervous grin.

“Whatever you want, kiddo, I just want you to eat.”

Hopping out of the van, Steven pocketed the cash, not bothering to stop and count it. These days, Greg tended to hand out money like it were candy, and he was willing to bet that he’d just been given a wildly inappropriate sum. Far more than he needed to buy breakfast, anyhow. Trying to return the change would be a futile effort, too.

“You want anything?” Steven asked, just to be sure.

“Nah, I’m good, I’ll see you later buddy.”

“Later, Dad.” Steven bid goodbye with an easy-going smile, attempting to alleviate his father’s worries, but judging from the concern still evident on his face, he had failed miserably.

As he walked further and further down the road, Steven kept shooting glances back over his shoulder until his dad was completely out of sight. Each time he looked back, Greg would be watching him, his grip on his guitar barely shifting. Steven turned to fiddling with his phone in order to distract from the growing discomfort in his abdomen. Now that he had realised just how hungry he was, it was difficult to focus on much else. His legs were weak, and he was beginning to feel slightly shaky.

As he absentmindedly flicked through various social media apps, one name in particular caught his eye. ‘_Connie_.’ He had promised her he’d talk to her today. He paused mid-step, and resolved to not keep her waiting any longer.

_[Wanna meet up in town?]_

He sent the message before he could think twice about it, shoving his phone back into his pocket just as he approached the Big Donut. He found his pace involuntarily quickening, his hunger spurring him forward as he rounded the side of the building. Flinging the door open with fervour, Steven was greeted by the overly enthusiastic smile of former-Mayor-turned-Donut-Boy Dewey.

“Why if it isn’t young Universe! What can I get for you, O valued customer?” He called out heartily.

Coming from anyone else, that kind of eagerness would have sounded incredibly sarcastic and overblown, but Dewey’s voice had a sincere vivacity to it. He had taken to his new role as Beach City’s chief server of sugary pastries like a duck to water. Steven found his mood lifting instantaneously, and he couldn’t stop his mouth from watering at the prospect of being so close to finally obtaining something to eat.

“I’ll take a box of three-” He paused. “No, _six_ donuts, please!”

After providing a list of the first six flavours that he could think of at a moment’s notice, and adding a smoothie for good measure, Steven gratefully received his order and waved a friendly goodbye to Dewey as he exited the store. Plopping down on one of the outdoor seats, he dug in. The way he shovelled his meal (if you could even call it a meal) into his mouth was hardly polite or dignified, and once again Steven felt grateful that Pearl wasn’t around to witness his unseemliness. Have donuts always tasted this divine, he wondered? Or was he just that hungry?

Just after he had finished his second donut, he felt a buzzing in his pocket. Wiping the fine layer of powdered sugar that now coated his hands onto his jacket, he retrieved his phone and unlocked it to find a message from Connie.

_[Sure, I’ll be there as soon as I can!]_

He leaned back, the backrest of the chair bending and creaking under his shifting weight. Plastic garden furniture didn’t exactly provide a luxurious seating experience, but Steven wasn’t fussy about that sort of thing. Nothing to do now but wait, he supposed. Sipping at his smoothie, he idly gazed out over the ocean, the sea breeze gently wafting his dark curls and pushing scattered foliage lazily across the pavement.

Just as he was about to slip into another daydream, Lars appeared, donning a striped apron.

“Hey Steven, it’s been a while, huh?” He greeted affably, a smile on his face.

Steven turned to face him, straw still caught between his lips. It really had been a while. Nearly a month, in fact.

“Oh, hey Lars! How’s it going?”

A few years ago, it would have been unthinkable for Lars to have willingly approached Steven at all, let alone be genuinely happy to see him. Being abducted by aliens and fleeing from their tyrannical leaders together had certainly changed their relationship dynamic, and the less said about Lars’ death and subsequent resurrection the better.

The two of them spent some time making small-talk, each filling the other in on the mundane details of their everyday lives, though there were certain topics Steven was very careful to avoid. Lars talked about baking, about some new recipes he had been meaning to try, about his parents and how they were doing, and Steven talked about the Gems, about little Homeworld, about how Lion had torn up his duvet again. However, despite his best efforts to maintain consistent eye contact, Steven found his gaze occasionally roving over to the right side of Lars’ face, now marred by a large scar. Starting just above the eyebrow and extending all the way down to his cheek, it served as a constant reminder of the tragedy the boys had so narrowly avoided, or rather, the tragedy that had in fact occurred but had been miraculously reversed.

And it had been reversed entirely by accident, too.

Back then, Steven’s control over his powers had been dubious at best. He could summon his shield and his bubble with an impressive level of competence, but he hadn’t mastered his floating ability, and his healing powers were unstable and unreliable. He knew he was capable of healing the living, and of fixing damaged gems, but had never imagined he could revive the dead. If he hadn’t been able to access that power, if he hadn’t cried over Lars’ lifeless body, if he had been just a step too late, neither of them would be here now. Lars would be dead, and Steven would have remained trapped on Homeworld. Hopeless, grief-stricken and consumed with guilt.

He felt a hand grasp his shoulder and shake it lightly.

“Hey! You listening?”

“Huh? Oh! Sorry Lars!”

“Are… you okay, man? You totally zoned out for a second there.”

“Uh, yes? I think I’m just tired, is all.”

“Hah, I don’t blame you, your life _is_ pretty crazy.”

_‘Not as crazy as being brought back from the dead’_, Steven thought, but refrained from saying aloud.

Eager to keep the conversation flowing, Steven commiserated about his ‘crazy’ life. He complained about how busy he had been lately, about how frustrating it can be dealing with Yellow and Blue, conveniently omitting any stories that directly involved White. He moaned and whinged and rolled his eyes in proper teenage fashion, making the occasional snarky comment here and there. This, at least, was something Steven greatly appreciated about spending time with Lars. He could be completely honest about how much everything sucks, without worrying about trying to seem upbeat and positive. And Lars would never press Steven to delve deeply into his own issues, simply allowing him to vent his frustrations in a light-hearted albeit heavily sarcastic manner. He understood the need to express difficult-to-address feelings through black humour, and instead of shooting him concerned looks like the others did, he would laugh right along with him and say ‘I know, right?’.

When Lars and Steven talked like this, he felt like a real, normal teenager.

Around thirty minutes had passed by the time Steven received a text from Connie informing him she had arrived in Beach City. So he bid Lars a reluctant farewell, promising that this time it wouldn’t be as long ‘til they see each other again. After a brief back-and-forth, he and Connie agreed on a meeting spot. With renewed energy and a full belly, Steven stood straight and strode off towards his destination, towards the place where his best friend was waiting for him.

* * *

There were two chief reasons Steven was glad Connie had been there that day in White’s head. Firstly, she had been the one to save his life, and of course he was eternally grateful for that. But secondly, and perhaps most crucially, it meant he didn’t have to go through the stress of explaining what had happened to him again. He wasn’t sure he could go through that a second time today. All he had to do was subtly imply that the reason he was so stressed had something to do with White Diamond, and she understood exactly what he meant.

Now sat on the beach side-by-side, the two of them were facing towards the ocean, eyes closed and hands carefully positioned in a meditative Dhyana mudra. Connie had suggested meditation as a means of clearing his head and alleviating his stress, and he had agreed almost instantly. He usually found breathing exercises and grounding techniques to be quite effective at helping him calm down, but, to his dismay, meditation didn’t seem to have that effect on him. Not today, at least. In the quiet atmosphere they had created, Steven found it all too easy to allow his mind to wander off course and start meandering down dark alleyways. Every now and then Connie would quietly remind him to control his breathing, but other than that she was still and silent. He cracked open one eye and watched her, her chest was rising and falling in a steady, controlled manner, and she seemed to be in a world of her own. He noticed a smidge of powdered sugar at the corner of her mouth. With her eyes closed, he thought there was no way she’d notice him staring at her so brazenly, that was until by way of some sort of psychic Jam Bud magic, she caught him out.

“You’re peeking.” She stated plainly, without so much as opening her eyes.

“Wha- How did you know that?!” Steven asked incredulously.

“Because you always peek, Steven.” She answered him calmly, but a smug grin was creeping its way onto her face.

“What? I do not ‘always peek’!” He sputtered unconvincingly, face slightly flushed.

Connie laughed at that, a sweet, unassuming sound that made his heart skip a beat. She turned to face him, and he followed suit, repositioning himself so that they were now sitting face-to-face. His face still slightly pink, he furrowed his brow and pouted at her.

“Alright, Universe, you can stop your pouting. Sorry for teasing you.” She sounded sincere, but the smirk on her face refused to budge, suggesting to him that she was in fact not very sorry at all.

“All is forgiven.”

“So, meditation’s not really doing it for you today, huh?”

“Yeah… sorry, Connie, I just can’t seem to get my brain to shut up right now.”

“Maybe you just need to talk it out?” She suggested, leaning forward slightly.

On the walk here, he had explained the gist of it, he told her about his flashback on Homeworld, he told her about why he had ran out on the Gems, why he had disappeared for several hours, where he had went. He even told her about that morning, about how he had finally told Garnet, Amethyst and Pearl what had happened after years of bottling it up. What more was there to talk about?

He scratched at the back of his head and chewed the inside of his lip. Truth be told, White Diamond wasn’t the only thing on his mind. It was becoming clearer and clearer to him that something was wrong with him, something he couldn’t quite pin down. These past few weeks, he would occasionally lose his appetite, or lay in bed until late afternoon, or find himself unable to concentrate. And these incidents were becoming more and more frequent every time he came back from Homeworld. Whilst he was there, the work kept him busy, kept him focused and forced him into a routine, but when he was back on Earth he found himself floundering. Simply put, he was exhausted.

“I guess I’m just tired…”

“Tired how?” Connie pressed, clearly not content to leave it at that. There was more to it than that, and she knew it.

“Tired like… I dunno, like sleeping won’t fix it?”

She shuffled forward, lessening the distance between them, but said nothing. He sighed and continued speaking.

“Everything has just been so non-stop lately, I’ve been warping back and forth to Homeworld like crazy, and the work never ends. I can get everything I need to do done in record time and Yellow will still find a new job for me, or Blue will need me for something else, and White…”

He paused, barely supressing a grimace.

“Dealing with White is on a whole other level.” He noted bitterly.

“Ugh, I just don’t understand why I’m… scared of her all of a sudden! I was fine up until now! I’m used to being around gems who have tried to kill me, I’ve done it all my life! Sure, I’ve had flashbacks before, about lots of things! But-“

He abruptly stopped himself, and Connie seemed confused by his sudden silence. He considered his own words for a moment, recalling all of the events in his life that had elicited similar reactions from him. The first time Pearl got poofed, Garnet being destabilised in front of him, Malachite, Bismuth, Eyeball… Vivid, distressing memories that plagued him long after the danger had passed. He had never took the time to catalogue these events, to lay them out in front of him and identify a pattern. Now that he could see it, it was painting a very disturbing picture of his life, and leading him to conclusions he’d rather not acknowledge.

“Connie, my life is so messed up.”

He met her gaze, and she seemed to understand his silent plea to speak aloud the thing he was too terrified and ashamed to admit.

“Steven, what you’re describing is trauma. I think you might have PTSD.” She said slowly and carefully, as if unsure of how he would react.

His blood ran cold. Hearing it said out loud, from the voice of his best friend no less, made it feel all too real. There was something seriously, clinically wrong with him, and he couldn’t ignore it any longer. He desperately wanted to deny it, to wave it off and tell her she was making it out to be more serious than it was, but he knew that was wrong. He wanted to say ‘but I’m not a war veteran’ but he knew that was wrong, too. Soldiers weren’t the only ones who got PTSD. Sometimes, half-alien teenage hybrids got PTSD too.

“PTSD.” He whispered breathlessly.

“And maybe depression.” She added gently.

Connie reached over and placed a hand over his, looking into his eyes sympathetically.

“Maybe you should see a therapist?” She framed it as a suggestion, careful not to push too hard, lest he start pushing back. As emotionally mature as Steven was, she understood all too well how difficult it could be to admit the need for professional help. It was daunting, and completely untrodden territory for him.

Steven knew the sensible thing would be to say ‘yes, of course, absolutely I will seek professional help for the horrible trauma that plagues my young, stress-addled brain’ but he found himself unwilling to give a concrete answer, unable to make that commitment. Did he even have the time for therapy right now?

“I’ll think about it.” He said, averting his gaze. He could see that Connie wasn’t entirely satisfied with that answer, but she mercifully accepted it and decided not to press him on the matter any further. That didn’t stop her from letting out a loud sigh, however. His paranoid mind fought to convince him that it meant she was disappointed in him, or worse, annoyed with him. That train of thought was interrupted as she opened her mouth to speak again.

“Are you gonna be okay?” She asked. She seemed almost vulnerable, as if her concern for his wellbeing was beginning to shake her own resolve.

“I’m gonna have to be.”

“You shouldn’t pretend to be fine when you’re not.”

“That’s not what I meant. There’s so much work to do, and I don’t wanna lose all the progress I’ve made.” His voice quietened. “Me and the Gems, we’ve come so far… I can’t stop now. I thought I was stronger now, but… I feel like I’m going backwards.”

As he was now, he was sure he was regressing. When he was younger, he took everything in his stride, dealt with all manner of dangerous situations and world-shattering revelations. He had a difficult childhood, to be sure, but that had made him into the person he was today. Now that he was older, he was supposed to be stronger, more mature, more capable. Yet here he was, exhausted and stressed to his limit, brooding over his past with newfound fear and reprehension. How could it be that just a year and a half ago, he coped just fine, and now he was paralysed by fear?

Connie sat up straight, and a determined look crossed her face.

“If you walk five miles from your house and fall into a pit, does that mean you’re back where you started?”

“Uh-.” Steven quirked an eyebrow. What was she getting at?

“No! It just means you’re in a pit! You’re still five miles away from your starting point!”

She prodded him in the chest with her finger.

“That’s where you are now, Steven. In a pit. But that doesn’t erase the progress you’ve made up until now, it just means it’ll take some time and effort to get back on track.”

_Huh. _He leaned back and considered her words. As always, she made perfect sense, and Connie Maheswaran was not one to be argued with.

“Impeccable logic as always, Ms. Maheswaran.” He lauded her playfully.

“Exactly! So you’d do well to take my advice, Universe.” She instructed, crossing her arms and tilting her chin up arrogantly. The illusion of haughtiness was broken moments later, however, when he dug his hand into the sand and flung it in her direction, scattering tiny particles through the air and covering her in specks of white and yellow. She sputtered and shook her head, shaking the sand out of her hair.

“Make me.” He challenged.

She levelled him with a faux-irritated glare, grasping a fistful of sand. Before she even got the chance to take aim, he scrambled to his feet and took off in the opposite direction. He could barely suppress the goofy laughter that escaped him.

“Hey! Get back here!” She shouted after him, giggling as she went.

If Connie were right, and this really was just a pit, then he supposed the only thing to do now was start climbing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Pit metaphor makes a triumphant return! In this story, I'm writing based on the idea that Steven's current stressful lifestyle is a catalyst for his trauma resurfacing, and that he's beginning to show early signs of depression because of it (his loss of appetite, staying in bed late, generally feeling lethargic etc). 
> 
> Also, yes, I am Connverse trash  
And, yes, Steven bought those extra donuts for Connie
> 
> Updates are likely to be slower now, we're in the finishing stages and wrapping up this story is gonna be challenging and I wanna do it right


	6. Chapter 6

The rest of the afternoon passed by in a blur. After chasing each other around on the sand like a couple of over-excited children, Steven and Connie set about spending the remainder of their time together on the boardwalk. They wandered up and down the worn wooden walkways, stopping and chatting with various Beach City residents whenever the opportunity presented itself. PeeDee, Fryman and Ronaldo, Kofi, Kiki and Jenny; to Steven’s delight and relief, they were all adjusting marvellously to the life-altering changes taking place in their hometown. After all, human beings weren’t the only folk found rambling about the boardwalk these days. Beach City now flourished with a diversity rarely seen anywhere else on Earth, with humans and gems of every shape and size lining the streets and dotting the crowds with a myriad of colours. The citizens of Little Homeworld had slowly but surely begun to integrate themselves into human culture, just as the Crystal Gems had done before them.

Some gems had already managed to establish long-lasting friendships with human beings, but many more had found themselves struggling to find common ground. Many were fond of humans, but held back from establishing intimate relationships and attachments, gravely aware of the difference in expected lifespan between the two species. Some were afraid they would only be setting themselves up for heartbreak, whilst others had learned to accept that all good things must come to an end, eventually. Regardless, nearly every formerly corrupted gem had gained new respect for humanity, for freedom, and for the value of organic life. At times it could be awkward, sometimes even downright terrifying, but humans and gems had finally begun to understand one another. Here on Earth, they were equals, and there was no room for questioning that fact.

Steven took in his surroundings, his heart swelling with joy each time he would happen upon humans and gems engaged in casual conversation, or spending time together at Funland, or simply enjoying each other’s company. Despite his doubts and his exhaustion, he could take pride in what he and the Crystal Gems had achieved here. Now more than ever, he understood the importance of his duty to protect this new world he had helped to create, and it weighed heavily on his shoulders. A burden he was happy to carry, but a burden nonetheless.

The sun had begun its slow descent towards the horizon, casting long shadows across the steadily cooling sand. Steven and Connie once again found themselves sitting on the beach, chatting absently about nothing in particular while Connie inspected a small plush toy she had won at the arcade.

“I’m just saying, this is definitely not worth the amount of tickets they ask for it.”

“No?”

“No! It’s tiny, and just look at that shoddy craftsmanship!”

To prove her point, she shoved the toy in front of his face, tugging at a loose thread. Up close, he could definitely see what she was talking about. The thing looked like it had been put through the wringer, yet it was supposedly brand new. Still, he was finding her impassioned rant about this cheap little toy incredibly amusing.

“Haha! If you don’t want it, I’ll take it.” He offered, grinning mischievously. Just as he made to grab the toy, however, she jerked it away.

“Nuh-uh, I won this fair and square!” She announced proudly.

“You mean _unfair_ and square?” He retorted.

“It’s not cheating if you don’t get caught.” She responded with a sly wink.

“Try telling that to Mr. Smiley.” Steven added with a pained grin, recalling the many times he and Amethyst had been forced to flee from Funland arcade, tailed by a very angry and bitterly exhausted Harold Smiley.

The sun continued its descent towards the sea, and the world around the two became enveloped in a gentle amber hue. The meagre warmth of the autumn sun had all but faded, prompting them to unconsciously huddle close together. If he were bold enough to admit it, Steven might have said that it was pretty romantic. He glanced at the girl next to him, now leaning into his side, and hoped that maybe she felt the same way. She looked at him, and they locked eyes.

He froze.

They were close enough that he could just about feel her breath on his face, and she would have felt his, too, if it weren’t for the fact that he had stopped breathing. The world around them became still and quiet, save for the gentle sound of the ocean waves and the lone cry of a distant seagull. Steven couldn’t help but feel a strange fluttering sensation rising in his chest, his heart beating just a touch faster than normal.

A few seconds passed, and the moment was rudely interrupted. Connie’s phone buzzed, and she promptly retrieved it. As she turned her face away, he felt a subtle pang of discontentment. ‘_What were you hoping would happen, exactly?’_ He thought to himself, chiding.

Fumbling slightly with the lock screen, Connie opened up the message.

“It’s my mom, she says she’ll be here to pick me up soon.” She said, sounding slightly dismayed.

“Aw...” Steven didn’t bother masking his disappointment.

She stood, and he immediately felt colder for it. She emptied the sand from her shoes and wiped down her jeans, and he watched her for a moment before pulling himself to his feet.

“Mom’s picking me up in town at the usual spot, so I should start walking.”

“Right, you sure you don’t want me to walk with you?”

Connie shook her head.

“It’s not far, and you should probably be going home, right? You seem pretty tired.”

He couldn’t deny that. These days, he found himself tiring more easily, and his erratic diet as of late certainly wasn’t helping matters. He really didn’t feel like parting just yet, but before he could say anything more, she had pulled him into a tight hug, which he readily reciprocated. Just before they parted, she spoke quietly into his ear.

“Take care of yourself.”

A timid smile made its way onto his face, and he let out a contented huff.

“I will.”

* * *

With the last of the daylight beginning to disappear over the horizon, and Connie gone, Steven decided there wasn’t much else for him to do but go home. In a few short minutes he had made his way down the beach and up the steps towards his front door. The journey seemed to only last a moment or two, and he didn’t quite feel like he had been walking long enough to have covered the distance. His mind was fuzzy, and he felt as if he were floating. In fact, he _had_ been floating, lifting weightlessly into the air and gently coming back down in-between strides. His alien biology combined with his uplifted emotional state allowed him to propel himself forward several feet at a time without touching ground, a contented smile glued to his face all the while.

There was no use in denying it, Steven thought to himself, this was Connie’s influence. She was beginning to have this effect on him more and more recently, and he was only just beginning to make sense of it all. He loved her, more than she would ever truly understand. He didn’t care if he was ‘too young’ or if he was just being naïve, he knew he would be by her side for the rest of her life. Not because they were destined for each other, but because he would work tirelessly to make it happen. A wise gem had once said that love takes time, and love takes work, and he was prepared to offer Connie Maheswaran all the time and energy she needed from him.

Somehow, he knew she’d do the same for him.

Admittedly, the whole floating thing was ever so slightly troubling. One of these days, she was going to do or say something that made him float all the way up past the clouds and into the outer atmosphere, and from then on there would be no use in trying to hide his feelings from her or anyone else.

Swinging the door open enthusiastically, Steven glanced around the living room to find its sole occupant sat on the sofa, as if expecting his arrival. Garnet immediately turned to face him, a knowing smirk on her face.

“You seem happy” was all she said.

“Yeah?” Steven rubbed the back of his neck bashfully, acutely aware of the fact he was probably blushing like an idiot.

“I’m glad to see you in good spirits, especially after this morning.”

In all honesty, he had almost completely forgotten about that. The true severity of his situation, and the revelations he had made on the beach, all came rushing back to him at once. It dampened his newfound joy slightly, but he refused to let it steal it away completely. He told Connie he’d take care of himself, and sometimes taking care of yourself meant swallowing back your doubts and your insecurities, ignoring that little voice in the back of your head that said you were a burden, and having as many difficult conversations as you needed to have in order to move forward.

“Yeah… I think I’m feeling better now. Kinda. I mean, I’m ready to talk about-“

“About the future.” Garnet suggested.

“About the past _and_ the future.” He corrected.

Seemingly pleased to hear that, Garnet extended her arm out, gesturing for him to join her. He happily obliged, promptly making his way over to the sofa and plopping down next to her. She wrapped her arm around him and pulled him close, and he nestled into her side. Steven had always been one to enjoy physical affection, and he especially enjoyed being close with his family. Garnet, in particular, made him feel more secure just by standing near him, and even the slightest physical reassurance from her was often enough to soothe his worries. Lucky for him, she was usually forthcoming with her affection.

This time, however, there seemed to be a subtle tension in her grip. Ever so slightly possessive, and decidedly protective. It reminded him of the way she held him when he was younger, when he was weaker, more naïve and infinitely more vulnerable. He could tell that there was something she desperately wanted to shield him from, even now that he had the full, unrestrained power of a Diamond at his disposal.

“You really don’t want me going back to Homeworld?” He asked straightforwardly.

“Yes.”

“You can’t stop me.”

“I know.” Garnet admitted, slightly dejected.

The Gems had never quite managed to convince Steven not to do something once he had set his mind to it. He couldn’t help but wonder how much they would have kept hidden if he hadn’t been so persistent in his search for answers. As a child, it certainly got him into a lot of trouble, and looking back on it now he could admit to himself that his stubborn nature was probably a major pain in the neck to his caregivers. As flawed as their approach may have been, they were only trying to protect him.

“…I get it, y’know? I get that you’re scared. I’m scared too. But… she won’t hurt me again.”

“She didn’t just hurt you, Steven, she tried to kill you.” Her voice quietened. “She almost did.”

“Garnet, lots of gems have tried to kill me. Bismuth tried to kill me too, remember? And look at us now!” He was trying to reassure her, but something about that comparison felt inadequate, even to him.

“But this is different.”

He opened his mouth to retort, but found himself promptly shutting it again. He wanted to refute her, but she was right. This _was_ different. He had been almost killed many times, had almost fallen to his death, had almost drowned, had almost been shattered, almost crushed, burned, stabbed, dissolved in acid; you name it. Each time he had managed to narrowly avoid taking physical damage that would kill him, and in those moments he was driven by adrenaline. He didn’t have time to think about it or dwell on the what-ifs, and once the danger had passed, he knew it had passed.

This had been the first time he had been actively _dying_. And no amount of fast reflexes or quick thinking could have saved him.

“Yeah, it is different.” He admitted.

“Steven, there’s so much we don’t understand about your existence. No-one could have predicted what would happen to you if you were separated from your gem, not even me. You never should have had to find out. I should have been there to make sure something like that never happened to you.”

Her voice came out strained, and was dripping with guilt.

He shook his head vehemently.

“No, Garnet, there was nothing you could have done.”

Garnet didn’t even attempt to argue that point. As much as she was beating herself up over it, she seemed to understand that she couldn’t have prevented it; in fact, he was willing to bet that was the reason she was so distraught. He knew from experience that a sense of utter powerlessness is one of the most terrifying feelings any living creature could ever experience. He couldn’t blame her for reacting the way she did, not at all.

“Maybe so.” She said reluctantly.

“But… that doesn’t make it any easier, huh?”

“Right.”

A few moments passed, and Steven wondered if he had inadvertently put an end to their brief discussion. Should he have chosen a different direction, or was there simply no more to be said? Garnet clucked her tongue and brought a hand to her forehead, frustrated.

“This isn’t about me, this is about you. I’m sorry.”

He opened his mouth to speak, to tell her there was no need for apologies, but before he could get the words out she spoke again.

“I know I can’t stop you from going back to Homeworld, or seeing the Diamonds, but… I’m worried about you, Steven.”

“I know, Garnet, but she’s not gonna hurt me again, I-“

“That’s not what I’m worried about.”

He paused. If that wasn’t it, then what _was_ she worried about?

“It’s… not?” He asked, perplexed.

“I’m worried about your mental state. I’ve never seen you like that- like _this_ before. What she did to you, it’s still affecting you. I can’t even begin to imagine what that must have felt like…”

_‘That?’ _he thought. Being torn in two, having his consciousness split two ways, existing as two separate entities simultaneously and never quite feeling whole until his two halves were brought back together again? The sensation of being inside a dying organic body was certainly one no gem could ever truly comprehend, he was sure, but there was another facet to his experience he was certain Garnet _could_ understand.

“I guess it was like… being a fusion that was forcefully split up?”

She turned to him, clearly surprised by his words.

“It was like I didn’t feel whole, and yeah… I was scared, and I was… dying. But when I came back together again?”

Once again, he felt an unintentional smile tugging at his lips.

“That was one of the best feelings I’ve ever felt. I felt so happy to just be me again. My human half loves my gem half, and my gem half loves my human half, and being together again made me feel like-“

“Like you’re made of love.” Garnet interjected, a gentle smile on her face.

“Yeah!” He sat up straight, turning to face her. A sudden realisation dawned on him, and he gasped loudly. “Is that what it feels like to be you?!” He asked excitedly, eyes glittering with ardent curiosity.

He wasn’t sure why, but the idea of having such a profound understanding of his beloved caretaker and mentor almost had him bouncing up and down on his seat.

She was silent for a short moment, taken aback by his sudden vivacity. However, her surprised expression was quickly replaced by an amused smirk.

“Pretty much.” She stated coolly, adjusting her visor.

“Does this mean I’m, like, a fusion?” Steven wondered aloud, eyes still sparkling.

Garnet gave a thoughtful hum, raising a hand to her chin.

“Not exactly. Ruby and Sapphire aren’t just two halves of the same whole, they’re their own gems too. Your halves can’t exist separately.”

He deflated slightly at that. She had a point.

“Right… It’s not like I’m just two Stevens mashed together. I’m not just a human with a gem either, or a gem with an organic body.”

“You’re Steven, and that’s all there is to it.” Garnet concluded.

Expression softening, Steven leaned back in his seat and allowed his head to rest against her shoulder.

“Yeah, I’m just me.”

She was right. As horrible as the whole experience had been, he had come out the other end knowing exactly what he was, exactly who he was. He had managed to achieve a stable sense of self and experience a powerful self-love that no normal human or gem could ever possibly know.

_‘See? It wasn’t all bad’_ he reminded himself inwardly, but a sinister feeling still lurked beneath his self-affirmation. He loved himself, sure, but he didn’t always love _being_ himself. Exhausted, overworked, and stretched to his mental and physical limits, White Diamond was only the tip of the iceberg; only one of many unresolved issues. Now that the cracks were beginning to appear, the dam was likely to break, and once that happened, every last one of his hidden insecurities and long-repressed traumas were going to come flooding out. It was only a matter of time.

He glanced up at Garnet. She was worried about him, about his shaky mental state, and who could blame her? He wasn’t eating properly, he was lethargic, and he had been shaken to his core by what he now understood to be a traumatic flashback caused by severe mental illness. Now that his life had settled into a somewhat predictable routine, he fully appreciated how utterly messed up his childhood had been, and how totally-not-okay he was. He adamantly refused to give up on his duties, and he wouldn’t allow anyone to stop him from returning to Homeworld, but as he stifled a yawn and felt his eyelids growing heavy, he recognised that Garnet may have had a point. He can’t go back there.

Yet.

Someday soon, but not yet.

“Hey, Garnet?”

She turned her attention to him, but said nothing.

“I’m not gonna go back to Homeworld for a while.”

As if by magic, the tension in her body completely receded. She leaned back, a contented smile gracing her features.

“Glad to hear it.”

* * *

That night, Steven went to bed with a full belly, courtesy of Garnet and Pearl, and fell into a deep, peaceful sleep. The hours passed by with nary a bad dream or late-night visit to the bathroom in sight, and he woke up feeling more well-rested than he had in weeks. Soft morning light shone through the windows, flooding the room with a gentle, tranquilising glow. The sun had already begun to climb up past the horizon, marking the beginning of a new day.

Steven sat upright and stretched, letting out a long drawn-out yawn. He looked out the window, down at the ocean which shimmered in the early morning sun. He watched the light refracting off the rippling surface of the water, like a million tiny stars scattered aimlessly amongst the waves, and took a moment to gather his thoughts. Today, he would contact the Diamonds, as he had discussed with the Gems the night before, and he would gently but firmly inform them that he was taking a break.

How would they react, he wondered? What questions would they ask? Would they be angry, disappointed, _hurt_? Would White Diamond be there, on the other end of the line? Did he even _want_ her to be there?

Already he could feel a creeping anxiety welling up inside his chest, so he shook his head and forcefully put a stop to his runaway thoughts. He took a deep breath, threw off his duvet and willed himself out of bed. He hastily got dressed, eager to get this over with as quickly and painlessly as possible.

Marching down the stairs into the living room, he found Pearl waiting for him in the kitchen and bid her good morning. She beckoned him over to the dining table, firmly but lovingly ordering him to eat the breakfast she had prepared him. He readily complied, despite not having much of an appetite.

_‘Step One of Steven Universe’s Official Self Care Plan: eat. (Underlined in red)._

_Step Two: tell the Diamonds you need a break._

_Step Three? To be decided, but we’re getting there.’_

Eager to keep his momentum going, he finished his food in record time, washing it down with half a glass of orange juice, the other half of which he had chugged before he started eating. He stood, thanked Pearl for the meal, and started walking determinedly towards the stairs. He desperately wanted to rush up to the warp dome and activate the communicator before he lost his nerve, but halfway up the staircase, he suddenly stopped in his tracks. He swallowed hard, and felt his stomach turn slightly. Maybe he shouldn’t have eaten so quickly, but he couldn’t allow himself time to dwell on his feelings. Even now, his anxiety was beginning to spike at the thought of confronting her again. He had no idea how the Diamonds would react to him contacting them, or how they would take the news. Moreover, he didn’t even know how _he_ was going to react.

He couldn’t really do this, could he?

He turned back to look at Pearl, who was watching him intently. She leaned forward slightly, pressing her knuckle to her mouth, clearly nervous and confused by his sudden pause. Just as she seemed like she was going to say something, he spoke.

“Can you come with me? …Y’know, stay with me while I talk to them?” He asked, slightly bashful.

“Of course.” She responded immediately, and was at his side in seconds.

Together, the two of them trekked towards the glass warp dome at the top of the house, through Steven’s bedroom and across the wooden balcony overlooking the beach. Once inside, he faced the communications console and took a deep breath to steady himself. Pearl stood behind him, and he glanced over his shoulder at her. She nodded tersely and offered a small, reassuring smile.

“Here goes nothing.” He muttered.

His brought his hand down over the large Diamond insignia inlaid onto the surface of the console, and it hummed to life, materialising a large, pink, geometric holo-display. He opened up a direct communication line to the Diamonds.

The call was answered within seconds.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh look, Steven is finally accepting that he needs to take a break  
Who do ya'll think is on the other end of the line?? *eyes emoji*  
The connverse is strong in this one, I cannot stop it  
I should probably add a ship tag now, huh? adwefsrdtfyu


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was planning on finishing this fic in 8 chapters, but uh...  
Yeah, we'll see how it goes, I may need more than 8 asdfrgtyg

With bated breath, Steven watched the screen flicker to life as his call was patched through to the receiving end. Briefly, he saw an image flash across it. It appeared, then disappeared within the space of a few seconds. From what he caught of it, Steven gathered that it was a placeholder image for calls in progress; a stylised logo featuring two pearls with a line of text in an alien language directly underneath. The image was promptly replaced by a live video feed of the Diamond throne room. Steven wasn’t given any time to dwell on his anxieties, being immediately greeted by a nervous smile and a pair of troubled eyes.

Shimmering, azure eyes.

His shoulders slackened and he let out a small, carefully concealed sigh of relief.

“Hey, Blue.” He greeted, trying his very best to sound casual.

“Steven! It’s so good to see you again!” Blue responded, somewhat hastily. There was genuine joy evident in her voice, but she seemed unsettled by something.

Her eyes quickly darted to her right, towards something off-screen, then immediately turned their attention back to him. Had he blinked, he would have missed it. Was there someone else in the room with her? She hesitated for a moment, clasping her hands together and leaning closer to the screen. Her smile wavered.

“How… have you been?” She asked nervously.

“Uh… fine!” He chirped, a false smile on his face.

Once again her eyes moved to her right, and he heard a pair of loud, crashing footsteps approaching. The Diamonds weren’t exactly the most stealthy bunch, and Steven had developed quite the knack for distinguishing between them by the sound of their footfall alone. Powerful though they may be, these footsteps simply weren’t loud enough to be White’s. At least, that’s what he hoped. As accurate as his Diamond detection skills were, he still made errors from time to time, and now he had the dampened sound quality of the communicator to contend with.

He froze, and swallowed hard.

The tension in his body eased by a fraction as Yellow Diamond’s face made its way into the periphery of the screen. Never in a million years had Steven ever imagined that seeing Yellow Diamond, of all gems, would come as such a relief to him.

“Steven.” She greeted tersely, though he noted there was a ghost of a smile on her face.

It was Yellow’s nature to be stern and formal in most things, but he was definitely an exception. These days, it only took a few words from him or Blue to break through her disaffected façade and bring out the vibrant, affable gem that dwelled underneath. 

“How are things on Earth? Progressing smoothly, I should hope.”

_‘Leave it to Yellow to get right down to business.’ _He lamented inwardly.

“Earth is doing great! Lapis and Peridot are getting a _little_ carried away with their plans for Little Homeworld, but Bismuth knows what she’s doing so I’m sure she won’t let them go overboard.” He reported with a casual wave of his hand.

“Fantastic. I’m sure you’ll be glad to hear that things are going well on our end, too.” She announced.

“Oh! Yes! We’ve almost finished liberating all of the colonies in the Milkomeda galaxy.” Blue added proudly.

The two of them searched his face, seeking his approval. He _had_ been the one to set these plans in motion, after all. It had been him that spearheaded the campaign to liberate every single Crystal System colony and put a halt to the colonisation of new planets, it was him who championed the values of love and freedom and self-expression and sought to teach those values to gems across the universe, and it was him who had made the Diamonds truly see the error of their old ways. They looked to him for moral guidance, revelled in his praise, and shrank back in shame when he admonished them. Three proud, strong and unknowably ancient alien overlords now doted on and followed timidly in the footsteps of a goofy, kind-hearted teenage boy.

The utter ridiculousness of the whole situation was not lost on him.

“That’s great, you guys! Good work!” Steven praised them with as much enthusiasm as he could muster without sounding insincere, like a primary school teacher commending his students for their good behaviour.

There was an endearing, poignant vulnerability in the way they desperately craved his applause. Their enthusiasm, he had deduced, was in part due to their lingering regrets about the way they treated his mother. Their entire society had been built on the foundation of a broken family, and only after recognising the cycle of abuse that led to Pink’s revolt did they understand the need to fix it. Through him, they were seeking redemption for their past sins, for the abuse that Pink Diamond endured, for the gems that were oppressed, shattered, discarded and cruelly experimented upon, for the establishment of a society that detested and rejected anything that fell outside the status quo. Somewhere along the way, the misery created by such a society had risen up through the ranks, engulfing the entire caste system and weighing heavily even on the hearts of those that stood at the very top. The Diamonds were growing, and they were changing, and growth and change were concepts that both Steven and the Crystal Gems were intimately familiar with. He understood that change was hard, that it was scary, demanding, and at times unpredictable, so he supposed it only made sense that they wanted reassurance that they were on the right track.

The two Diamonds perked up upon hearing his praise, expressions becoming ever-so-slightly smug.

“Hah! You think that’s good? Wait until you see our plans for the Ametrine colonies in the Kepler-90 star system.” Yellow declared zealously, a self-satisfied smirk on her face.

Steven cocked his head. He never was good with remembering the names of star systems, or with locating them on star maps, for that matter. It typically fell to some other, more studious gem to point it out to him.

“Which one was that again?” He asked.

“In the Draco constellation, remember?” Blue prompted him gently.

“Right, the uh, Draco constellation… Of course.” All of this technical stuff was lost on him, really. He cleared his throat and tried to sound professional. “Sounds good, send me the case file and I’ll take a look at it.”

Suddenly, he felt Pearl nudge him in the arm with her elbow. He glanced back at her and she nodded towards the screen, her eyes flitting back and forth between him and the video feed.

“Oh, right.”

He had almost allowed himself to be sucked right back into his familiar, dogged workflow. Asking Pearl to come along had been a wise decision after all. He straightened his back and took in a sharp breath through his nose.

“Actually, guys… This isn’t what I came here to talk about.”

The two Diamonds shared a concerned glance.

“What _did_ you want to talk about?” Yellow asked, but something about their demeanour told him they had already anticipated his answer.

“Uh…” He rubbed at the back of his neck and looked to the floor, searching for the right words. Should he explain the incident from a few days ago, or should he just go ahead and tell them he needed a break? Either way, they were sure to ask him to elaborate, forcing him to talk about one or more issues he’d really rather not discuss with them.

Before he could open his mouth to explain himself, Blue spoke in a quiet, sorrowful tone.

“This is about the last time you were here, isn’t it?”

Steven looked back up at the screen to find her averting her gaze, sombre eyes straying towards the far corner of the throne room. He glanced at Yellow, who looked back at him unflinchingly.

“Yeah…” He admitted.

“I see.” Yellow straightened her posture. “I presume that means you’re going to explain to us exactly why you ran out in _such_ a hurry?” She questioned.

Her tone was slightly harsher than he would have liked it to be, but perhaps he was just feeling particularly sensitive today. Yellow continued to stare down at him expectantly, and he unconsciously shrank back into himself. Sweat began to bead at the back of his neck, a tingling anxiety settling in his stomach. Once again, he was being interrogated for making a sudden and unexplained exit. He inwardly admonished himself, resolving not to allow this to become a recurring pattern.

A reassuring hand placed itself on his shoulder and give a light squeeze, and somehow he plucked up the courage to speak again.

“I-… I’m real sorry about that, you guys, it was rude to leave without a proper goodbye. I just wasn’t feeling good, that’s all.”

“Oh my, are you ill?” Blue asked softly, concern lacing her tone. He had once explained to them how the human body could become sick from time to time, and had given them a rundown of the most common ailments, as well as some of the more serious conditions. Most of the information had come from Connie, he just regurgitated it, but he was pleased to see that they had retained it.

“No- well, yes… Sorta… in a manner of speaking?”

He paused, and upon seeing the confusion written across Blue and Yellow’s faces, clarified his meaning.

“I’m not _physically_ sick.”

Again, the two Diamonds shared a confused glance. Steven sighed, and proceeded to elaborate. Was he really going to have to explain the concept of mental illness to a pair of alien beings that were eons older than he was?

“I mean, yeah, I did throw up a little after coming back home but that’s because- No, never mind, that’s not important. What I mean to say is-” He glanced back at Pearl, who nodded at him.

“I’m sick, mentally. Like, mentally ill.”

“_Oh_.” Was the only response from Yellow, who seemed to be trying very hard to understand what he was saying. As intimidating as she had been just a few moments ago, she seemed quite placid now. Whatever anger she had felt towards him, if any, had completely dissipated, replaced with troubled apprehension.

“Like corruption?” Blue inquired, wide-eyed. Just as she was about to work herself up into a panic, Steven stepped in to reassure her.

“No, not corruption! Not exactly, anyway… there are similarities, I guess, but it’s different.”

Could he even experience corruption? Shuddering at the thought, he forcefully ejected the very idea from his mind. He could only hope that he would never find out the answer to that question.

“It means… I guess it means my brain isn’t working right. A-and I think maybe the work is… making it worse? It’s been so busy lately, and stress can have bad effects on a person’s mind.”

Yellow and Blue stared at him with wide eyes, unsure what to make of it all. Steven pushed onwards, determined to make good on his promise to fulfil Step Two of his plan.

_‘Tell the Diamonds you need to take a break’._

“I guess what I’m trying to say is… I think I need a break.”

“A… break? A break from what, exactly?” Inquired Yellow. Steven couldn’t be sure, but he thought he had detected a trace of injury in her tone. He wondered briefly if she was worried that it was _her_ he needed a break from. Or was his intense aversion to hurting other people’s feelings just putting ideas in his head?

“From the _work_.” He clarified. “I’m exhausted… I’m tired all the time and, well, you saw what happened with White…”

There was a subtle change in the Diamonds’ expressions, a mutual understanding dawning on both of them at once. Blue, in particular, seemed saddened by his words.

“So it _was_ about White…” She mumbled.

Yellow hummed in agreement.

Steven nodded, though neither of them were looking directly at him anymore.

He wasn’t about to explain the concept of trauma and the effects it had on the human mind, and he certainly wasn’t about to _describe_ the trauma that had affected him so badly in the first place. Not now, not today. The Diamonds didn’t need to know just yet. Still, he refused to lie, so instead he settled on an explanation that was technically accurate, yet obscured the true significance of the incident.

“When White… reached towards me… I guess my fight-or-flight reflexes kicked in when they shouldn’t have.”

He and Connie had spent many long evenings preparing and performing presentations for the Diamonds on all manner of subjects relating to Earth and its wondrous inhabitants, including basic biological functions and survival mechanisms. He figured explaining his actions this way would make more sense to them.

“I guess, when you’re mentally unwell… sometimes your survival instincts take over. One of the drawbacks of being half-organic, I guess…” He paused, hoped that that explanation would suffice. He received no response from either Diamond, but upon studying their faces found that they were listening intently, hanging on his every word.

“I know I’m a Diamond, and I know I have duties to attend to, but I’m human too…”

Clutching his shirt, he cast his gaze downwards, towards the corner of the room. The Diamonds so often forgot about that part of him. He hated to admit it, but it brought back unpleasant memories, reminded him of a feeling of alienation he had thought to be long forgotten. For all his life it seemed that humans and gems alike would choose at their own convenience whether they considered him to be human or gem. Stood directly over the boundary between the species, with one foot in each camp, the only label that seemed to make sense to him was ‘alien’. Not quite human, not quite gem, but something entirely new, and entirely strange. A being that nobody really understood.

“I need to take a break every once in a while... Otherwise I might end up working myself into the ground…” He said quietly.

Steven kept his gaze lowered, waiting for a response. He heard a sharp intake of breath, followed by Yellow Diamond’s voice.

“Alright, we’ll take over your duties for now. Take all the time you need.” She spoke with an air of professionalism, but upon meeting her gaze Steven saw a gentleness behind her eyes that he had never quite seen before.

His eyes widened slightly, unbelieving. Had it really been that easy?

“Really? I don’t wanna put you guys under any pressure.” He hadn’t considered that his absence would lead to an increased workload for the others, and the thought of it was beginning to make him feel quite guilty.

“Oh, don’t worry about us, Steven. We Diamonds know a thing or two about pressure.” Blue reassured him gently, turning to Yellow with an anticipative smile. “Right Yellow?”

Yellow gave an undignified snort in response, followed by a hearty laugh totally unbefitting someone of her station. The disparity between her authoritative outward appearance and the goofy quality of her laughter was greater than the distance between Earth and Homeworld. The Luminous Yellow Diamond, great and terrible commander of Homeworld’s armies, conqueror of planets and destroyer of worlds, and her greatest weakness was pun-based humour.

“Pressure!” She exclaimed, wiping a tear from her eye. “Good one, Blue.”

Yellow turned to Steven and offered him a relaxed smile, though something about her features ensured that she always looked at least a little bit smug. 

“She’s right, we’re more than capable of handling all of Homeworld’s affairs ourselves, we’ve been doing it for six thousand years after all.”

_‘Six thousand years,’_ Steven thought, ‘_and here I am asking for a break after a year and a half’_.

“Besides, now we have White helping us too! She’s so much more involved than she used to be, now that she no longer shuts herself away.” Blue added.

Steven simply nodded, having felt a sting of anxiety shoot through him at the mere mention of White Diamond. He desperately didn’t want to face her yet, but his curiosity was beginning to get the better of him.

“Speaking of White… where is she?” He asked hesitantly.

“Busy.” Yellow answered immediately.

Something about her response seemed rehearsed.

“O-oh… well, could you guys pass on the message to her, too?”

If he played his cards right and kept his nerve, he could get through this without having to speak to her at all. That would certainly be the preferable outcome, but deep down Steven knew he couldn’t avoid her forever. He would need to talk to her about what happened at some point, and he would need to talk to her alone.

“I could go get her, if you-”, Blue began, but Steven immediately interjected.

“N-no, no! You don’t have to do that!” He blurted out tactlessly.

Big mistake.

Blue and Yellow regarded him with confused expressions, and he felt panic rising in his chest once again. It felt rude to do it in such a hurry, but his anxious mind was screaming out for him to end the call right then and there. _'Don't let them get White. Don't let them ask any more questions.'_ His next words spilled out of his mouth at lighting speed, in an unnatural-sounding, barely coherent run-on sentence.

“I’m sure you guys are super busy I don’t wanna be a bother oh would you look at the time gotta go love you bye!”

With a chipper wave, a cheesy grin plastered onto his face and sweat beginning to gather on his forehead, he slammed his hand down onto the console and cut the feed. The bright pink hologram that had been illuminating his features dissipated into thin air, and Steven stood, staring unblinkingly at the wall behind the console. His hand was still raised in front of him, frozen in place.

He remained there, still and silent, until Pearl approached him from the side, wringing her hands.

“Steven…? Is something wrong?” She asked cautiously.

Letting out an exaggerated groan, Steven deflated and let his face fall into his hands, bringing it down to rest on the console with a heavy thud.

_‘Really, Universe? _That’s_ how you end your call with the Diamonds?’_

If she could see his face, Pearl would know that a furious blush had now spread across his cheeks. Thoroughly mortified, Steven crossed his arms on the surface on the console and buried his face in the fabric of his sleeves, muffling his response.

“I said ‘love you’…!”

Pearl let out a relieved sigh.

After taking a few moments to recover from the sheer embarrassment of his unintentional profession of love (to the Diamonds, no less, he wasn't sure if what he felt for them could even be described as love), Steven pulled himself upright and turned to her with a pitiful pout.

“Oh, it’s not so bad!” She said airily with a wave of her hand, but there was an amused smile on her face that only served to intensify his humiliation.

“Promise me that next time it looks like I’m about to say something embarrassing you’ll put a bubble around my head or something.”

“I can't make any promises.”

He whined miserably, but as the two made their way back across the deck, bantering back and forth, he somehow managed to retain a good sense of humour about the incident. Still blushing slightly, he even managed a genuine chuckle or two.

Pushing open the sliding glass door, he and Pearl stepped into his bedroom. There, they were immediately greeted by a mass of long, messy, white-ish hair that sat directly in front of his television.

Amethyst turned to face him, an oddly serious expression on her face. Just as he was about to greet her, she waved a Playstation controller in his direction with an outstretched arm.

“Wanna play for a bit?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Milkomeda galaxy is what the Milky way and Andromeda galaxies are expected to merge into 4 billion years from now. I figured that since the Earth's geography is different in this universe, space should be too. However I can't be bothered coming up with a fake in-universe name for Playstation, so.... Playstation it is lmao  
Welp, White wasn't present, wherever could she be?
> 
> Oh well, that doesn't matter, now Steven gets to have a fun time playing video games with Amethyst and there's totally no chance of her trying to bring up touchy subjects under the guise of casual game session conversation or anything like that


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'll be honest, I wasn't actually too happy with how the last chapter came out, but I can be really self-critical so idk  
I'm much happier with this one  
In other news, how about that SUF promo huh???? I am absolutely wigging out over it

Taking the controller from her hand, Steven plopped himself down next to Amethyst on the floor, leaning back against his bed. Pearl promptly dismissed herself, leaving the two of them to their game; a bullet hell style side-scroller that Steven couldn’t quite recall the name of. Not that it mattered much, there wasn’t a single game in his library that he didn’t enjoy playing, and he was pretty good at it to boot. Together he and Amethyst breezed through the first few levels without any difficulty, making infrequent conversation and occasionally chiding one another for narrowly avoiding death. Every now and then, she would turn to look at him, as if she were going to say something, but each time she turned her attention back to the screen without so much as a word passing her lips.

He shook his head and concentrated on the game. The action was fast-paced and chaotic, and he needed to pay attention if he were to make it through this level without losing a life.

A few more minutes of relative silence passed, and Amethyst finally spoke.

“So,” she began, and his eyes briefly flicked over to her face before promptly returning to the screen. “How’d it go?”

“Hm?” He cocked his head slightly sideways, still focused on the flashy visuals displayed on the television screen.

“You know, talking to the Diamonds?”

“Oh, that.”

Preoccupied with keeping track of his character on-screen amid myriad enemies and their unpredictable attack patterns, he shrugged and gave a vague, noncommittal response.

“It went fine, I guess.”

“Was _White Diamond_ there?” She asked, bitterness in her tone prompting Steven to throw another quick glance in her direction.

His grip on the controller tightened slightly.

“No…”

The room fell silent, save for the peppy electronic music flowing faintly from the speakers, and the frantic tapping of buttons. The volume had been turned down low from the very beginning of their play session. Once again, the two of them made it through to the end of a level without suffering any casualties. A congratulatory message appeared in colourful bold text, followed by a burst of pixelated confetti flickering across the screen.

A near-perfect score.

The victory screen lingered there for a few moments, triumphant synthesised fanfare playing on loop, and neither of them made a move.

Amethyst set her controller down in front of her with a sigh.

“What, she too afraid to talk to you or something?” She asked in a nasally, mocking voice.

White Diamond? Afraid of _him_? The very thought of it made his heart ache. Despite everything, he felt a strange, confusing sympathy for her. A twisted sense of guilt knotted up inside him at the idea that he had made her feel so ashamed of herself that she couldn’t even bring herself to face him.

“I hope not.” He answered. The last thing he wanted was to make anybody feel ashamed of themselves, it was contrary to everything he strived to be; he wanted nothing more than to be positive, inspiring presence to those around him, even those that had done him wrong.

“She should be.” Amethyst hissed.

Steven knew that Amethyst’s animosity was directed at White, and that the hostility in her tone was in service of her concern for _him_, but it was beginning to put him ill at ease.

“Yellow said she was busy…” came his half-hearted defence.

“Dude, she’s totally avoiding you. What a pus-“

“Amethyst, cut it out.” He warned.

He wasn’t in the mood to sit and listen to her needlessly berating someone, even if that ‘someone’ had been the cause of the most severe trauma he had ever experienced. Something about it just felt… mean. In fact, he didn’t want to think about White at all right now, and this conversation was very quickly starting to get on his nerves.

Amethyst pulled her knees to her chest with a huff and turned her head, obscuring her face from his view.

“…why didn’t you tell us?”

Her voice was meek and laden with emotion, a stark contrast from her usual bombastic self. The sudden change in her mood threw him for a loop, and all his only response was a dumfounded ‘huh’?

“Why didn’t you tell us about what happened?” She reiterated, slightly louder and clearer, though both of them were well aware that he had heard her the first time.

Tapping his fingers nervously against the trigger buttons, Steven turned his attention to the controller in his hands, studying it intently in a vain attempt to distract from his growing discomfort. Why _hadn’t_ he told them? He wasn’t sure he could even answer that question. Had he not experienced that flashback in the throne room, would they have ever known at all?

“…I don’t know.”

“Were you _ever_ gonna tell us?” She asked, a hint of betrayal in her tone.

“…I don’t know. Probably not.” He admitted quietly.

In his peripheral vision, Steven saw Amethyst turn to look at him, but he kept his gaze focused on the controller in his hands, fiddling with the joysticks. Had he inadvertently hurt her by keeping this all to himself? Should he have confided in her sooner?

“Did _she_ tell you not to talk about it?”

A jolt of vexation shot through him, and he whipped his head round to face her.

“No!” He snapped defensively.

“Then _why_?” She pressed, pleading.

“I-” He scrambled to say something, despite having no real answer to give her, but was immediately cut off by an increasingly tense and impatient Amethyst.

“You hid it from us for nearly two years…! All this time- I just don’t get it! Why couldn’t you tell us? Why-…”

He struggled to come up with a response, to say something, anything, but his mind was totally empty.

“Why couldn’t you tell _me_?!” She exclaimed, voice breaking, clapping a hand to her chest. “I get why you wouldn’t tell Garnet or Pearl but-… I thought it was different with me! We’re supposed to be there for _each other_!”

He gawked at her, utterly speechless, chest brimming with a contradictory mix of intense guilt and profound indignation. Some selfish part of him wanted to resent her, in this moment, for taking it so personally, for making this all about her. He felt compelled to argue with her, to tell her she was being selfish, or that he was only trying to leave the past behind him, but one look at her face washed away the very notion of it.

Her eyes were misty, her lip trembled, and she looked objectively heartbroken.

Amethyst had been the first Crystal Gem to make an actual effort not to dump her emotional burdens on him, to not saddle him with thousand-year-old complexes he had no part in developing, and she had _promised_ him she wouldn’t fall apart on him. Yet he, in whatever foolish judgement he though passed for wisdom, had deemed it necessary to shield her from his suffering, as if he believed she wasn’t strong enough to handle it. As if he didn’t trust her to understand.

She had made her fair share of mistakes, that much was certain, but the two of them shared a unique kinship as the youngest members of the original Crystal Gems. They had grown together, inspired each other to be better, to be stronger, they even shared the same insecurities. Whether they fought side-by-side or as opponents, Amethyst had always treated him as an equal, even when the others had deemed him too weak, too naïve, or too inexperienced to handle himself.

She knew him like the back of her gem, and she knew that he was never coping as well as he seemed to be. He knew her like the back of his hand, and he knew all she wanted was for him to be honest with her. She was angry, that much was obvious, but she wasn’t angry at _him_. He could tell, he knew her so well, that her anger was directed elsewhere, at something more abstract, something intangible.

She was angry at the injustice of it all, and he could do little else but watch, paralysed and entranced, as she stood and broke out into an impassioned rant.

“This whole time you’ve just been running back and forth to Homeworld and acting like nothing’s wrong! And White Diamond has been acting like she hasn’t _done_ anything wrong!”

Because nothing had _felt_ wrong up until now, he told himself. Because White Diamond is different now. Because the past is the past, and the future is supposed to be so much brighter than this.

“And none of us had any idea how bad things were! No-one even thought to ask! You always act like you need to deal with everybody else’s problems, but you never ask for help with yours!”

Because that’s what he had been taught his whole life.

Granted, nobody had ever _told_ him that his feelings needed to be pushed aside for the sake of the greater good, nobody _asked_ him to forget about his own psychological needs in favour of maintaining peace within a fragile, dysfunctional family dynamic, nobody _forced_ him to become a physical and emotional punching bag for damaged individuals, but regardless, that’s what he had learned to do. It’s what he knew, and he was _good_ at it.

Terribly, disturbingly good at it.

“You act like the horrible things that happened to you don’t even affect you! And everybody _else_ acts like it doesn’t matter either!”

Because that way, everyone was happy.

Because that way, they didn’t have to worry about him.

Because that way they could all just move on with their lives.

But Amethyst was upset now, because of him, because he had kept secrets from his family. She was worried, because he had been incapable of just getting over it and moving on with his life already. Because he should have just told them right away, and maybe then it wouldn’t have been such a big deal. Because repressing his trauma had only served to make everything worse.

Making everything better was the one thing he was good for, and he had failed miserably at it.

The buzzing sense of frustration and guilt that had steadily simmered inside him suddenly exploded and discharged itself through a near-involuntary outburst.

“Because it _doesn’t_ matter, Amethyst! It never did! Everybody else’s happiness is more important than my own stupid problems!”

He was standing now, the controller that had sat in his lap having clattered noisily to the floor. Amethyst’s eyes widened and her jaw fell slack, and he, upon realising what had just happened, stepped back and clapped a hand over his mouth.

He really hadn’t meant to say that, it was far too revealing, far too personal; the ugly culmination of years of repressed resentment at his situation combined with his own shockingly low sense of self-worth. One part of him believed his words, genuinely meant them, and another part of him (the part he had forcefully driven deep down inside him, to the very back of his psyche) was simply venting his frustrations, trying to make Amethyst see how unfair it had all been.

For a moment he feared he had offended her, or that his sudden anger had scared her away, but upon studying her face he saw that she now regarded him with a look of heartfelt concern. Just a moment later he realised that his own eyes were welling up with tears.

Great, that was bound to make her worry even more.

He averted his gaze, grasping weakly at the fabric of his jacket sleeve.

“I mean- I know that’s wrong _now_, but… I was doing fine up until now. It’s just… it’s always been this way, I guess… I know you guys care about me, and I do trust you but… at some point it started to feel like bringing up my own problems was more trouble than it was worth. I just didn’t wanna be a burden...”

Of course, he was beginning to realise now that bottling up his feelings didn’t do anyone any good (it’s what had gotten him into this mess to begin with), but long-held insecurities don’t disappear overnight, and unintentionally or no, Amethyst had struck a fairly delicate nerve. A nerve which had been constantly and repeatedly poked and prodded over the last 48 hours or so.

The room fell silent once again, and Steven fidgeted uncomfortably, still refusing to look Amethyst in the face. He was beginning to feel very ashamed about raising his voice, and was acutely aware of how quickly Amethyst’s temper had flared. This conversation had escalated so quickly and unpredictably, he was at a total loss as to where it would go from here.

He figured the wisest thing to do now was keep his head down, stay quiet and wait for her to say something.

“Well, that’s stupid.” She stated, frank yet subtly affectionate.

That certainly wasn’t the response he had expected.

“What!?” He jerked his head up to look at her.

“Dude, really? Okay, when was the last time you ‘burdened’ us with one of your problems?” Her tone could only be described as ‘lovingly sarcastic’, and she had placed a pair of air quotes around the word ‘burdened’.

“…Yesterday?” He creaked out, elongating the word whilst levelling Amethyst with a questioning look.

Considering the events of that morning, surely that was the correct answer?

“You mean when Pearl and Garnet practically forced you to talk? Doesn’t count.”

“Uh…”

While he personally wouldn’t say he had been ‘forced’, she had a point. If they hadn’t been so insistent on having him open up, he probably would have found a way out of it. He would have taken it to his grave if he had the final say in the matter.

“See?! Steven, you never talk to us about this stuff. You’re not a burden or whatever. Heck, all you’ve ever done is help people! We just wanna help you, too… At least, I know _I_ do…”

“…Really?” He asked, just to be absolutely, 100% certain that she wasn’t just saying that because it was considered the correct thing to say.

“Yes!” She threw her arms up in an exaggerated motion. “What the heck do you think we’ve been tryna do this whole time?!”

Steven sighed a heavy, weary sigh and slumped down to the floor, resting his head back against his bed.

He pondered her words, replayed the entire scenario over in his mind. All this time, he had avoided talking about his struggles, had swept his issues under the rug, had pretended to be okay with every little messed up thing about his life because he believed that was what was best for his family. Yet everything they had been doing, everything they had been saying, everything that had happened in the last few days totally contradicted that belief. In reality, repressing his traumas and refusing to share his worries had only compounded the issue, made him unstable and unhappy.

An unstable, unhappy Steven certainly wasn’t what his loved ones needed nor wanted. In fact, they seemed _desperate_ to help him. For all their flaws and their missteps, they were trying, for his sake. They were worrying over him, spending their time and their energy trying to make him see that they could help make things better for him, if only he gave them half a chance.

He wasn’t dragging them into the pit with him, they were reaching into it and trying to pull him out.

“…Alright, fine, okay.” He acquiesced.

Amethyst gave a sigh of her own, then sank down next to him, bumping up against his shoulder.

“Sorry for yelling.”

“Me too.”

“So… are you doin’ okay?” She asked, gentle and cautious.

“I-… no? …I don’t think I’ve been okay for a long time.”

She leaned against him and rested her head on his shoulder.

“What’re you gonna do about White?”

He, in turn, rested his head atop hers.

“I don’t know… Connie said I should get therapy. I think she’s right… Maybe when I’m feeling okay again I can learn to be okay with being around White again too.”

“You don’t wanna, like… I dunno, make her _pay_ for what she did?”

“No, not really. I’m not angry at her. You’re angrier at her than I ever was.”

“Well, duh! What she did was messed all the way up!”

“My _life_ is messed all the way up…” he added with a laugh, small and bitter.

For a few moments, neither of them spoke. Steven’s eyes traversed the room, studying the floor, the walls, the television screen, the shelves, closely surveying the details without really committing any of it to memory while debating his next words. Now that they were talking, now that Amethyst had well and truly worn him down, he wondered if he should just go ahead and confess all of the worries that had plagued him throughout his young life. Well, not _all_ of them, but maybe a few big ones.

He had read somewhere that confessing things made you feel lighter, and he was tired of feeling so heavy.

He shifted uncomfortably, careful not to jostle his companion, and spoke in a hushed voice.

“Don’t tell anyone I said this… but sometimes I used to wish that I had never been born.”

“Geez, that’s a little dark.” She said, but made no judgements.

He shrugged.

“Since we’re talking about heavy stuff… I figured I should get that one off my chest.”

Amethyst let out a small huff.

“…Believe me, dude, I get it.”

And she did get it. Unfortunate circumstances of creation were, for better or worse, something the two of them had in common. Amethyst had the Kindergarten, Steven had Rose Quartz. In order for them to come into being, life had been taken away, resulting in dire ramifications. The Kindergarten Amethyst was made in had ravaged the area so severely that organic life could no longer be sustained there. Rose Quartz’s death had left the Crystal Gems, and Steven’s father, dazed and heartbroken, without direction or guidance. An area deprived of life, and a legacy left unfinished.

A legacy that had caused Steven so much needless pain.

It didn’t help that the Gems had so often compared him to his mother, or that Pearl would so openly grieve her absence in his presence. At some point, he had internalised the belief that all of their turmoil was somehow his fault; his birth, his very existence, had taken away something precious to them, and they all would have been better off if Rose was there instead of him.

At least, that’s what he used to believe.

“I don’t feel that way anymore, by the way.” He clarified.

“Good. Me either.”

“Good.”

A few seconds passed before Amethyst spoke up again.

“Welp, since you’re getting things off your chest and all, got any more depressing confessions to make?” She asked, playfully nudging him with her elbow.

“…I’m scared of seeing White Diamond again.” He admitted tentatively.

“…Yeah, figures.”

A brief but heavy silence followed. The air was still and brooding, and Steven focused inwards. The weight of Amethyst’s head on his shoulder and the feeling of her arm pressed up against his own grounded him in reality, assured him that he wasn’t alone, reminded him that she was right by his side, no matter what. She now knew something about him that no-one else did, had been made privy to one of his deepest, darkest insecurities. It felt… oddly refreshing. He had always told himself that admitting such grim thoughts out loud to his loved ones would be humiliating and troublesome, but the words had come out so easily, and now she knew, and nothing terrible had happened.

He should have done this a long time ago.

“You got any more?”

More? If it’s more confessions she wanted, then Steven was all too happy to oblige. He counted off his frustrations on his fingers, finally allowing himself to admit aloud the hardships he faced as a result of his circumstances.

“The Diamonds are a pain in the butt to work with, I’m tired all the time, I’m scared of confronting my trauma, my life is totally stressful right now and I just wanna curl up in a ditch and never have to think about any of it ever again. How’s that?”

“Heavy.” She said bluntly. “But hey, at least you’re taking a break from Homeworld junk, right?”

“Yeah… but… I mean, I should probably, you know, do the whole therapy thing, right? Apparently that can be pretty challenging. Not exactly my idea of relaxation...”

Unbeknownst to anyone else, he had been talking with Connie on the subject, discreetly texting back and forth since the previous afternoon. From their discussions, he had gathered that therapy could be just as psychologically demanding as de-colonising a planet, re-structuring an empire, or trying to keep a trio of former dictators from reverting to their old authoritarian ways. Maybe even more so. Therapy needed to be engaged with, and recovery was a tricky, demanding process. Working through his long history of trauma and self-repression certainly didn’t sound like a walk in the park, but it was becoming abundantly clear that he needed to do it, sooner rather than later.

“Pshh, nah, what you need is a vacation! _Then_ you can do the therapy stuff.” Amethyst said with a casual wave of her hand.

“Uh, I don’t know if that’s a good idea…”

“Just think about it, dude, if this therapy stuff is really as difficult as you say it is, then shouldn’t you get a little R and R in first?”

He chewed the inside of his cheek thoughtfully. Once again, she made a good point. It was vital that he start working towards actually tackling his issues instead of putting them off, but as he was now he wasn’t sure he had the energy or the strength to really put the work in. Besides, a large part of him still found the idea of seeking professional help incredibly daunting. In an ideal world he would start tomorrow, or as soon as humanly possible, but the irrational, terrified mind of a traumatised child just didn’t work that way. Was it not enough to set a firm date, sometime in the foreseeable future, and say ‘I will seek help then’?

He needed time to work up his nerve, he needed time to speak to his dad about it, and Garnet, and Pearl. But most of all, he just needed rest. He just wanted to be with his family. He didn’t want to worry about his increasingly abundant duties, or about his difficult upbringing, or about the weight of the Empire that rested so squarely on his small, tired shoulders.

He just wanted to be a normal kid, if only for a little while.

“A road trip could be cool.”

“Now we’re talkin’.”

* * *

The next morning, Steven called an impromptu family meeting, summoning his dad to the house and excitedly gathering Garnet, Amethyst and Pearl in the living room. Despite Pearl’s questioning, he refused to explain himself, adamant that they all wait for his father’s arrival.

“Steven, what on Earth is this all about?” Pearl had asked from her place on the sofa, curious and utterly confused.

Sitting to her left, Amethyst chimed in, an amused smirk on her face.

“Come on, P, you’ve asked him that like three times already. It’s supposed to be a surprise, right Steven?”

She winked at him, and he crossed his arms, addressing her with an unimpressed glower. He had told her to keep it on the down low, but she possessed all the subtlety of a jackhammer, and was dangerously close to giving away the game. He leaned in close and spoke quietly.

“A surprise that you know absolutely nothing about, _right Amethyst_?” He asserted firmly, hissing through his teeth.

“I’m pretty sure Amethyst knows everything about it, seeing as she helped plan it.”

Steven and Amethyst whipped their heads round to face Garnet, who had taken to leaning against the bathroom door with her arms crossed. She looked back at them with an infuriatingly smug simper.

“Wha- How did you know?!” Cried Amethyst, dumbstruck.

“S’pretty obvious…” She answered lazily, as if to emphasise just how little effort it had taken to figure them out.

Steven took in a deep breath and heaved a defeated sigh.

“Okay, doesn’t matter, I’m still not telling y’all anything until Dad-“

As if on cue, Steven heard the familiar sound of his front door creaking on its hinges. Swinging the door open, Greg stepped into the room, and greeted his son cheerfully.

“Hey, Schtu-ball! You said something about some sorta surprise?”

“Dad! Perfect timing!” Steven called, rushing over to his dad and eagerly pulling him by the arm.

Once Greg had sat down, Steven stood before his waiting audience, hands on his hips, chest puffed up and a self-satisfied smirk on his face.

“So, me and Amethyst have been talking, and we thought it would be a good idea to have a family vacation. All of us, together!”

Pearl and Greg exchanged an amused glance, and Garnet stood up straight.

“Things have been pretty stressful lately, and… well I thought it would be nice to just, y’know, spend some quality time together, as a family.”

A wide smile quickly spread across Pearl’s face. Greg was also smiling, his expression gentle and loving.

“What kinda vacation are we talkin’ here?” asked Greg, who was now sitting forward expectantly.

Steven looked to Amethyst, who responded with a wink and a thumbs up.

“How about a road trip?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Amethyst is definitely prone to becoming angry on Steven's behalf, but sometimes people getting angry for you isn't pleasant, especially when they take to insulting the person who hurt you despite you having conflicted feelings about said person yourself (if Amethyst can almost-say 'badass' in canon, she can almost-say 'pussy' in my fic lmaoooo)  
Steven is far too forgiving and empathetic for that approach to work  
But the great thing about siblings is that hard feelings can literally be washed away within seconds and then you're back to being thick as thieves dfghbjkl  
Also, don't worry, this isn't gonna turn into some 30 chapter long road trip fic, they're just planning it for now
> 
> So, yeah, if all goes to plan then the next chapter may well be the last  
There's one last person Steven absolutely needs to talk to before I can call this fic finished


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, it's been a bit, huh?  
Sorry this one took so long, I've been working through a depressive episode and it sucked my creative energy right outta me, but I'm back! And now I'm a lot more inspired!

Garnet, Pearl and Greg gathered around the coffee table, marvelling at the maps that Amethyst had produced from behind her back just moments before. Messy text wavered and skewed across the paper unevenly, scribed by jittery, excited hands. Vivid red lines traced a path from place to place, brightly-coloured dot to brightly-coloured dot in a roughly circular pattern carving a path through the tri-state area and back to Beach City. Parts of the route jutted out and created massive detours, whilst other parts seemed to circle around a particular town or city; some multiple times.

To put it frankly, the thing was a mess, and Pearl didn’t waste any time in pointing it out.

“I know you two were excited but… this is hardly the most efficient route we could be taking.” She said delicately, careful not to dampen the mood.

“Aw, who cares.” Amethyst retorted coolly with a wave of her hand. “This way we get to see all the _good_ stuff!”

Pearl turned her attention back to the map and scanned it with a discerning eye.

“Do we really need to visit this… cola factory? Or the silver dollar museum?” She asked incredulously.

Amethyst simply shrugged.

“Sure, why not?”

It was then that Pearl turned to Steven. She seemed positively baffled as to why anybody could possibly find these places appealing.

“We don’t have to do _everything_ on there.” he reassured her. “Those are just suggestions. Actually, we wanted you guys to help us, uh… finalise our plans.”

“Well,” Pearl began as she pulled a marker from her gem in a flash of brilliant white light, “First we need to figure out a more efficient route, or Greg is going to be spending a fortune on gas…”

Despite Greg’s continued insistence that she needn’t worry about his finances, Pearl set about optimising their route, ensuring that they could hit as many tourist traps, landmarks and historical sites as possible in the most efficient conceivable manner. She traced neatly along highways and backroads, circled the names of towns and cities with such perfection that Steven couldn’t help but admire her handiwork, and occasionally consulted with Garnet’s future vision about whether or not a particular place was likely to live up to their expectations. Greg simply rubbed his head and entrusted the fate of his funds to the Gems.

Amethyst was heavily involved in choosing which destinations were essential to the trip and which could be (reluctantly) scrapped. She and Pearl quibbled back and forth across the table whilst Garnet watched on, shaking her head and occasionally interjecting with a compromise. At this point, Steven had taken a step back, observing his family with a warm, silent smile. They didn’t seem to notice his withdrawal from the conversation, so he took his opportunity to quietly pull his father aside.

“Can I talk to you for a second?” He asked, pointing a thumb towards the door.

Out on the deck, the two of them stood side by side, arms resting atop the railing and taking in the crisp Autumn air. It was cold, but not unpleasantly so, and Steven huddled close to his father. He was almost as tall as him, now, and ten times as strong. Steven could probably lift him off the ground without so much as breaking a sweat, heck, he could probably do it with one arm if he wanted. So much had changed since he was a child, he was taller, stronger, and more mature now, but there was a special kind of childlike vulnerability evoked in him when he was alone with Greg. No matter how big, or powerful, or old he may be, he’d always be Dad’s kid.

“So, uh… this thing you wanted to talk to me about…” Greg prompted gently.

“Right…”

“Does this have anything to do with what happened a few days ago?”

Steven paused. A few days ago, when he had ran out of the house and went on a joy ride without so much as telling anyone where he was going. He had almost forgotten about his little disappearing act, things had been so hectic lately.

“Kinda? Well, yeah…. It has to do with a lot of things.”

A lot of things that he wasn’t prepared to get into now. With a pang of guilt, Steven noted that there were plenty of things the Gems knew about that his father had never gotten the opportunity to know. All Greg seemed to understand, even now, was that ‘gem stuff’ was dangerous and mysterious, and that Steven often found himself caught up in the middle of it all. He had only ever accompanied Steven on a single mission, and during it he had gotten his van destroyed and his leg broken by a watery facsimile of his own son. Danger and mystery aside, Greg then also discovered that ‘gem stuff’ was decidedly _weird_. There was no telling what kinds of horrific and otherworldly things Steven had been exposed to. As desperate as he was to be there for his son, there was part of him that was too afraid to ask.

“I’m taking a break from Homeworld stuff.” Steven said.

“Is that what this whole road trip thing is about?”

“That’s… part of it. There’s something else.”

“Something _else_?” Greg asked, nerves pitching his voice up half an octave.

“It’s just… I dunno, I’ve been so exhausted lately. The work is stressful, and there’s just so much of it. The other day, I-”

_‘I had a traumatic flashback to a horrible thing that I never told you about’? _

Never mind opening a single can of worms, a statement like that would result in an endless feedback loop of cans within cans within cans. Just as Greg knew that there was a portion of Steven’s life that was inaccessible to him, Steven knew that his father wouldn’t be able to bear hearing about the suffering he had endured all these years. The trauma he harboured, the strain of the responsibilities he bore, the fragility of his mental state, his sheer inability to cope with it all. It would break his heart to know that he couldn’t provide his son with the happy, carefree life he and Rose had wanted for him.

“The other day was… kind of my way of dealing with it all I guess. I know I shouldn’t have just took off like that but… I guess I was feeling a little overwhelmed.”

He couldn’t hide it from him forever; that was a lesson he had learned in the hardest of ways with the Gems. Someday, he would tell his dad everything. He would tell him, and he would cry, and he would hug him tight and apologise for ever being stupid enough to try and deal with it all alone.

Someday in the future, Greg would know everything, down to the smallest detail.

For now, all he needed to know was that right here, right now, his son was struggling to cope.

“Dad, I think there’s something wrong with me.”

A short silence followed, and Steven looked up at his father to find a look of concern so profound that it made his chest squeeze. Greg placed a hefty arm over his son’s shoulder and pulled him closer.

“Wrong how?” He asked quietly.

“Like, mentally? There’s a lot you don’t know, Dad, but… I think I’m starting to realise how messed up my life has really been. I’ve been talking to Connie about it and… well, she said I should… see a therapist? I dunno, I guess I wanted to run it by you first.”

Steven noticed his dad’s eyes widen slightly upon hearing him mention a therapist, and he turned his attention to the ocean, fixing his gaze on the horizon.

“I had no idea things had gotten so bad…” Greg murmured remorsefully.

He knew his dad probably felt guilty about not figuring it out sooner, but Steven himself was glad that he hadn’t caught on. After all, he had worked so hard to hide it.

“So…? Do you think I should go through with it?” Steven pressed, hoping against hope that perhaps the responsible adult in this situation would do him the kindness of making the decision for him.

‘_When a kid is sick, his parents make him to go to the doctor, right?’ _He thought._ ‘If Dad says I have to go, then I have to go, and that way I can’t back out of it.’_

“I can’t make that decision for you, son…” Greg said softly, to Steven’s dismay. “If you think it could help, then I say go for it. But it’s totally up to you.”

Steven simply sighed and continued to watch the horizon. Of course. The decision was still his to make, and there was only one correct answer. That didn’t make it any less difficult, though. Greg gave his shoulder a reassuring squeeze and spoke again, soft and loving.

“I’ll support you either way… you know that, right?”

Steven nodded. If anything was certain in this world, it was, without question, that Greg Universe would be there to support his son, no matter the weather. Even if the entire universe turned against him, even if he transformed into a massive, grotesque monster with huge teeth and crystalline spines covering his body, even if he shrank down to the size of a pebble, or turned pink all over, Dad would be there, and he would love him all the same.

“…Couldn’t hurt to try, right?” Steven offered with a tentative smile.

He was shivering now, ever so slightly, despite the fact he had a jacket on. His dad, on the other hand, was wearing only a t-shirt and jeans, but Steven saw no goose-bumps on his arms, nor did he feel him shivering.

“You’ll be alright, buddy.” Greg reassured, rubbing Steven’s arm affectionately.

Greg must have sensed something in him, some need for reassurance, some unspoken yet desperate desire for hope that he himself hadn’t noticed, because Steven found himself affected by those words in a way he hadn’t expected. A slight twinge in his chest, he swallowed down the lump that had suddenly formed in his throat and gazed silently out over the ocean.

The horizon lay in front of him, separating the sky and the sea. A visible boundary that, by all rights, didn’t actually exist. Any person looking off into the distance would tell you that they could see a line there, clear as day, but it was nothing more than an illusion. You could voyage into the great wide ocean, sail for days, months, years on end and never reach it. A thing that could be perceived, but never touched.

Steven wondered if he could believe his father’s words. The future was, much like the horizon, something that in essence didn’t really exist. One could put all of their time and energy and passion into preparing themselves for their future, only to find that their entire life has passed them by in the meanwhile. He could hope that everything would be okay, in the future, and he could lay down plans to make everything better, in the future, but would that ever really amount to anything? He spared another glance at his father, who had now also taken to gazing dreamily out over the sea.

Even if it was impossible to reach the horizon, setting sail towards it would get him farther than standing and staring. Even if the future was a nebulous, intangible thing, moving forward was better than sitting still. Braving the turbulent, merciless ocean ahead of him was worth it if it meant he could be anywhere but here. He had to confront the things he had furiously forced down into the deepest, darkest depths of his being.

He had to face his fears.

And there was one gem he feared facing above all others.

* * *

In the dark and quiet night, after Greg had returned to his van and the Gems had retired to the temple, Steven made a decision. Perched on the edge of his bed, he sat in silence, dared not move a muscle until he was sure the house was utterly still. There was no longer any muted chatter or quiet footsteps, only the constant, relentless ticking of a clock.

He glanced at the glass doors behind him, sucking in a sharp breath through his teeth.

“Alright, here goes.”

Picking up his phone from its position on the bed beside him, he sent a quick text to the only other person who know what it was he was about to do.

_[Wish me luck.]_

A heart emoji included, he sent his message and pulled himself promptly to his feet.

With only the pale moonlight to illuminate his path, he slowly, carefully made his way over to the door and slowly slid it open. He paused once again, listened carefully for a few seconds. Nothing, save for the ticking clock and the rhythmic sound of the ocean waves.

Stepping out onto the deck, he closed the door behind him with a slow but fluid motion. He took a long, deep breath, filling his lungs with the familiar, refreshing air of Beach City. If he breathed deep enough, soaked in the salty breeze and let it cling to him, perhaps he could carry its comforting scent all the way to Homeworld.

Nothing like a little piece of home to make you feel safe on an alien world, after all.

As he walked towards the warp dome, Steven couldn’t help but wonder what the others would think about what he was doing. Connie at least had been supportive, but had issued several grave warnings about the effect it could have on his mental state.

“Don’t be afraid to back out. Don’t feel bad if you have to run away again.” She had told him.

He didn’t want to back out. He didn’t want to run. He didn’t want to be afraid anymore.

But he was.

Steven couldn’t help but notice how his hand jittered as he lifted it towards the access panel, how his legs felt slightly shaky as he walked and stepped up onto the platform, how he hesitated for a few moments before finally prepared himself to activate the warp pad. It frustrated him to no end, but no matter how hard he tried he couldn’t stop himself from trembling, couldn’t stop the tingling feeling in his belly that threatened to unsettle his stomach and make him sick.

Just as he was about to depart, his phone buzzed in his pocket.

_[Connie - 1 new message]_

Despite himself, he smiled and tutted disapprovingly as he opened the message. She should be asleep by now. Her mother wouldn’t be too happy to know she was staying up late to check up on the mysterious, magical teenage boy she was becoming so affectionate with.

But Connie Maheswaran wasn’t one to be chained down by petty rules, or her parents’ paranoia.

_[Good luck, be careful, and take care of yourself. Remember, if you need me all you have to do is call.]_

He hoped it wouldn’t come to that, but it was comforting to know that if it all went terribly wrong, he could rely on Connie to help him through it. Bolstered by a wave of newfound determination, Steven stuffed his phone back into his pocket and stretched his arms out with a dramatic flair. Within seconds, he was completely enveloped by a bright, blue light.

* * *

Interplanetary travel tended to take a bit longer than warping from place to place back on Earth, so Steven was allowed a few moments to steel himself as he floated in the warp stream. In his head, he went over his plan, repeating his goal over and over like a mantra until he was sure he had it fully committed to memory.

Warp in to the throne room. Find White Diamond. Talk to her, face to face. Simple, easy. Well, except for the fact that he was utterly terrified.

Once on Homeworld, he needed to act fast. First, he would discern White Diamond’s whereabouts. Then, he would talk to her. Just, stand in front of her and say things and try not to notice the sweat coating the back of his neck and the twisting fear in his gut.

Easy, this would be easy. He’s done it so many times before.

Though he desperately hoped he wouldn’t run into the other Diamonds before seeing White, it was highly probable. The throne room was a hub of activity these days, often occupied by more than just a trio of Diamonds. All kinds of gems came and went, asking questions, having discussions, making preparations for the dissolution of colonies and the establishment of a new status quo. There was no telling who he would be faced with, how many would be there or what exactly they would be doing. If he were lucky, there would be no-one at all, or maybe a crowd large enough that he could slip by unnoticed.

The former situation was highly preferable, being the so-called ‘Saviour of the Galaxy’ and prodigal son of the much-beloved Pink Diamond didn’t exactly allow many opportunities for ‘slipping by’. Somebody was likely to recognise him, and that somebody could put a wrench in this entire plan by simply speaking his name loud enough for other gems to hear. Even worse, if Blue or Yellow were there… well, the less he thought about that the better, especially after the less-than-graceful way he had ended their last conference call.

Steven was pulled from his musings as felt his feet touch down upon crystalline stone, signifying that he had reached his destination. He held his breathe as he watched the warp stream recede, providing him a clear view of the Diamond throne room. He glanced around.

It was totally empty.

He released the breath he was holding with a high-pitched ‘hoo’, shoulders slumping and head lolling back. Now, where next?

Stepping off the platform, he scanned his surroundings, gaze settling upon the four imposing thrones mounted on the northern wall. He looked to White’s throne, elevated above the rest; a relic of old, serving as a display of her dominion over the other Diamonds, and her power over every gem that served them. She no longer held that authority, and that was a truly good thing, but Steven wondered if it had been difficult for her to leave her old life behind.

She was the impeccable White Diamond; perfect, without flaw, logical, all knowing and all encompassing. Her will was the will of all gemkind, her judgement was objective, her rule absolute. Everything she did, everything she was, it was all for the sake of maintaining her perfect Empire. Emotion, desire, love? It was all unnecessary fluff to her, she didn’t need it, didn’t want it. White Diamond was not an individual, nor an identity, she was order incarnate, free of the petty feelings and attachments experienced by lesser gems.

Except, she wasn’t.

Try as she might, she couldn’t repress the love she felt for Pink Diamond. Couldn’t shake her desire to restore her family to the way it used to be. Her objective worldview was an illusion, a waking dream she had projected onto the gems she created to avoid facing the unbearable truth; she, with her attachments and her desires, was just as fallible as any other gem. She, the flawless and perfectly rational White Diamond, had believed Steven to be Pink Diamond, and had been proven wrong. Completely, undeniably, objectively _wrong_. Contradicted by a half-organic hybrid abomination so beneath her she may have never even acknowledged his existence if not for the gemstone embedded in his belly.

Her pedestal well and truly broken, she had been dragged down to the level of a being she had considered a needless, inferior existence. Who was she, if she was not perfect? Who was he, if not Pink Diamond? He had told her she could be who she is, but she had no idea who that person even was. Yellow and Blue, after their change of heart, had started over from square one, striving to be better versions of themselves. But White? White had been set all the way back to square zero. A blank slate, unsure and undefined.

But, just a year and a half later, she had already made exceptional progress. As irritating as she could be, Steven appreciated the fact that she now had a defined personhood. She doted on him just as much as the other two Diamonds, but in her own unique way. She was still ignorant, and often times downright disrespectful, but there was something profound about the way she was so open about her flaws these days, after being so afraid of being anything other than perfect. She was perfectly willing to allow him to correct her, and now spoke to the other Diamonds on equal footing. She still had a long, long way to go, but she had come further than he could ever have hoped.

And yet now she was somewhere on Homeworld, hiding herself away, shutting others out, just as she had done before. All because of him…?

Steven shook his head. Feeling guilty wasn’t going to get him anywhere, he needed to focus on finding White Diamond. He needed to face her, and she needed to face him. She wasn’t the same gem that had so brutally torn him apart all that time ago, and he was no longer the helpless child that had been powerless to stop her.

Reaching the entrance to the Great Hall, Steven pushed aside the translucent curtain and looked out over the landscape of Homeworld, taking in its janky, technicolour architecture in all its incomprehensible glory. At the centre of it all, a familiar silhouette dominated the skyline. The unmistakable visage of White’s ship stood tall and stalwart above the hustle and bustle of the settlements below. That was where she would be, he was sure of it.

And if White Diamond was there, then that’s where he needed to go.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had intended to make this the final chapter, and have it be twice as long as a normal chapter, but I decided to split it in half. Partly because I didn't wanna wait so long between updates, and partly because it'd be nice to end it on a nice, round 10.  
Anyways, next chapter WILL actually be the last asdfrgthyjukio  
See ya'll then, I will definitely have it out before December 7th, when SUF will likely completely contradict everything that happens here ahaha


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last chapter gang, here goes.

There were only two ways in to White’s head that Steven knew of. One was being transported there, according to her will, through the means of a floating white orb that, to this day, he couldn’t understand the mechanics behind. The other was through the pupil, a simple matter of climbing the ship, reaching the eye, and sliding through into the chamber below. Straightforward, and laughably easy now that he had full control over his gem-given strength. All he needed was a few seconds to wind up and a good push off and he had managed to launch himself nearly a hundred feet into the air with very little effort. The top of his arc overshot the eye by a fairly significant amount, allowing him to carefully float down into the aperture.

However, the anxiety plaguing his mind counteracted his floating ability just enough to cause him to drop faster than he had intended, and he landed inside the tunnel, belly-first, with a heavy thud. Groaning, he pushed himself to his hands and knees and looked ahead. Should he announce his presence before entering the chamber? Would it be considered rude to drop into someone else’s ship totally uninvited? He had no idea what the proper etiquette was, and he had never thought to find out. He never thought he’d have to come back here. If he allowed himself to sit and think about it, he would probably find a way to put it off, so Steven pulled himself to his feet and marched determinedly onwards. No more running, no more hiding, no more avoiding difficult conversations. The idea of going back to the very room where it happened was nerve-wracking to say the least, and he sorely wished that White had holed herself up somewhere else; somewhere far, far away from here. But this was the place she chose, and he had no choice but to follow.

The angle of the tunnel changed sharply, and Steven slid smoothly downwards towards the chamber below. From this point onwards, gravity was his driving force, and he submitted to it completely. Despite the nervous static in his chest, he made no attempts to slow his descent, or to dampen the sound of him touching down on the perfectly polished stone floor. He landed in a crouch, eyes screwed shut, one hand pressed hard against the smooth, icy surface. It was just as cold as he remembered it being.

He took in a deep breath, released it slowly. Took in another, released.

_‘You can do this’, _he told himself, a rare moment of gentleness from his self-critical inner voice.

Opening his eyes slowly, he rose, stood as tall as he could and scanned the chamber. Massive, colourless, lifeless, and darker than he had ever seen it. The walls and the floor were slate grey, dark and imposing, a stark contrast from the misty, uneven greys and whites he remembered. The difference struck him enough to momentarily distract him from his growing unease. The graduated platform upon which White had stood so proudly all that time ago was directly ahead of him, now marred by a massive crack that split it down the centre.

_‘I did that.’_

Right, he had done that. Or, his gem had done it. Was there even any point in trying to differentiate? At the time, his pink doppelganger had seemed like a total enigma to his human self; a blank slate, unfeeling and unpredictable. But now that he retained his memories, he understood the reasoning behind his actions, could feel the untamed rage that had resulted in his terrifying display of power.

Steven looked to the left. Surely enough, the crater was still there; a deep gouge in the stone, cracks spreading out from its centre like a spider’s web. His fading vision at the time couldn’t quite make it out, but Steven’s human half had been pretty sure he saw his gem half walking on thin air as he approached. He knew now that he had been right about that, he could remember walking on air as if it had been solid stone.

Re-living those events through his gem’s eyes was perfectly bearable, for some odd reason. Perhaps the fact that Pink Steven himself was not fearful of the situation meant that there were no negative emotions connected to those memories, no neural pathways in his human mind that told him to panic when recalling them.

He then looked to the right. More empty space. There was nothing visually distinct or meaningful to be found, but somehow looking at this side of the room filled him with a deeper sense of dread than any other visual cue. That was where he had woken up, gem-less, delirious and on the brink of death. That was where he had crashed down onto the hard stone, sending a shockwave of pain through his weakened body, and where he had cried and begged ‘_please, I need it’_, had gasped out a desperate plea for help, teeth chattering and body growing colder by the second.

He felt it now, too, a terribly cold sensation washing over him as if he had been doused with ice water. The sensation was quickly replaced by a confusing heat, which was in turn replaced by another shiver. He felt both hot and cold at once, but the clamminess of his hands and neck told him that his body temperature was on the rise. He needed to pull himself out of this, he needed to move away and focus on something else, but he was frozen. His feet rooted to the spot, he felt his heart picking up its pace, felt his breathe hitch.

The beginnings of a trauma-induced anxiety attack. It was awful, and it felt as if he was very quickly losing control of his situation, but now he knew what it was, and he knew that there were ways to deal with it. First, he needed to ground himself, slow his racing heart and control his breathing. Screwing his eyes shut, Steven drew in a deep breath. He inhaled for four seconds, counting on his fingers, held onto the breath for seven more, and then inhaled slowly, counting up to eight as he did. He didn’t always manage to time it out right, a few times he released the breath too early or gasped air into his lungs too fast, but after repeating the process a number of times he felt his body starting to revert to its natural rhythms.

He opened his eyes once more. His body still thrummed with nervous energy, and he felt far too warm in his now-stuffy jacket and jeans, but he wasn’t panicking anymore, he no longer felt paralysed.

_‘Good, now do what you came here to do.’_

Right, White Diamond. She was surely here in this chamber with him, but she had been silent this whole time. Unlike the first time he was here, there was no blinding light to draw his gaze, no falsely saccharine voice calling for his attention. He raised his gaze to the top of the platform. There she was, sat with her legs neatly tucked and with perfectly straight posture, facing the wall. One glance at her form was enough for Steven to understand why the chamber was so dark now; the luminescent White Diamond, supposedly composed of every colour of the light, had gone dull. She still donned her usual white and grey colouring, but the light that composed her form didn’t shine as brightly as it had before. She looked… well, she looked just like any other gem now, the light that composed her body was projected just strongly enough to convey her form and colouration, but no stronger.

He stood and stared for a few moments, at a loss for what to do. Had she truly not noticed he was here? Was she waiting for him to make the first move? Maybe he should have announced his arrival after all.

“Uh, hey White.” He greeted as casually as he could, but couldn’t help the apprehension in his tone.

She turned her head to face him, eyebrows raised in surprise, and it was now that Steven saw the large, holographic screen that floated in front of her. She really hadn’t noticed him.

“Steven!” She exclaimed with hesitant cheer. “Back on Homeworld already? My, you are a hard worker!”

“Uh, actually… I didn’t come here for work.” He said, hoping to deflect from the subject altogether.

So the other Diamonds hadn’t yet told White about his break. White herself seemed utterly perplexed by his presence, and who could blame her? Steven never visited the Diamonds unless he was on Homeworld for work, so the idea of him popping in out of the blue like this was unheard of. He felt a tad guilty for that, he probably should have tried to spend a bit more leisure time with the Diamonds, found some way to enjoy their company and allow them to enjoy his.

“There’s just something I needed to talk to you about.” He said as he walked towards the platform, White’s eagle-eyed gaze following him the entire time. She always did have a bad habit of staring him down in the most pressurising ways.

He sat down on the middle step, but couldn’t quite settle, holding his body taught; a spring ready to launch at the first sign of danger. His fingers gripped the edge tightly, cold stone pressing into his palms and providing him at least some relief from his elevated body temperature. White’s confused expression never left her face.

“And what would that be?” She questioned.

He was no longer facing her, body turned towards the opposite side of the room from his seated position, but he looked over his shoulder. Looking at White’s face was marginally less terrifying than allowing his eyes to wander the chamber. When they did, his mind would conjure up images of the terror he had experienced here; vivid memories superimposed onto his surroundings like actors on a living stage. And the face she wore now was so unlike the face she had on back then. She no longer had that menacing smile, teeth clenched with impatient frustration, or those furious eyes that had stricken terror into him as she held him tightly in her grasp as he struggled and struggled and couldn’t break free no matter what he did, as she reached towards him with those nails, those terrible obsidian claws which-

He looked away, turned his gaze to the far wall. He had almost allowed himself to slip away again. Almost. Taking in a jittery breath and releasing it steadily, he turned his head to face her once again, hands clasped in his lap.

“I, uh… I’m gonna be taking a break from my duties for a while.”

“A… break?”

“Yeah, a break. I already talked to Yellow and Blue about it. Did they really not tell you?”

White paused, pondered something for a moment, her expression indecipherable. She let out a thoughtful hum and turned back to her screen.

“And when did this conversation take place?” She asked.

“Like, yesterday?” He answered hesitantly.

The chamber fell silent again. Steven had never seen White this quiet before. She was usually so eager to cut in and admire the sound of her own voice, but now she seemed to be at a loss for words. Was she upset that Yellow and Blue had kept her in the dark? Or had he thrown her off by showing up so suddenly?

“So, uh-” He began, hoping to move the conversation forward, but was interrupted.

“You know, you had us all awfully worried there, Starlight.” White said in that overly affectionate affectation she was so fond of addressing him in.

There she went using his Mom’s old pet name again. He sighed, but didn’t have the energy to voice his misgivings; that was a conversation for another day.

“Yeah, I know… Sorry for running out on y’all like that.”

White turned to regard him with a gentle smile, the emotion behind which he couldn’t quite decipher.

“You really are so much like her, always running off to do your own thing back on Earth.”

Once upon a time, White Diamond would have spoken of Pink’s rebelliousness with nothing but disdain in her voice, but now she took on a warmly wistful tone. Normally, being compared to his mother irked him deeply, but in this moment he couldn’t help feel touched by White’s subdued disposition. She rarely allowed other people to see her so vulnerable, so timid and withdrawn.

He let out a sad chuckle.

“Yeah, I get that a lot. But… y’know, there is one big difference between me and her.”

White blinked, her mournful expression quickly replaced by curiosity.

“Oh? And that would be?”

He smiled gently, and found that the tension in his body was beginning to recede. Second by second, word by word, he was regaining a sense of normalcy.

“I’ll always come back. I’m not gonna leave you guys hanging, or disappear forever without saying anything, or, uh, start a war and fake my shattering. I know I just sorta ran away last time I was here but…”

He finally allowed himself to relax his posture, reclining back against the step.

“I came here to show you that everything’s fine. That _I’m_ fine. I just… I have some human stuff I need to work on for a while, but I’ll be back, I promise.”

Using a vertical clapping motion, White collapsed her screen between her hands. It disappeared completely, as if vanished into thin air. (For the life of him, he couldn’t understand how gem technology worked.) She turned her body so that she was no longer facing away from him, though she made no move to stand. She seemed brighter now, both in disposition and in colouration, the light emanating from her body illuminating the chamber in a soft glow. The walls and floor were now a light, misty grey; brighter than before, but still subdued. Steven rested his elbow against the platform, propping his head up on his hand and looking expectantly at White, waiting for a response.

“Well, I suppose we’ll find _some_ way to manage without your presence. I’ll try not to shatter from boredom while you’re gone.” She whined pathetically, pressing the back of her hand to her forehead. Her ‘guilt-tripping grandmother’ persona was back in full swing, then. Though her tone was less exaggerated than usual, and there was a tender affection behind her words.

“I’m sure you can handle it just fine.” Steven assured her with a playful roll of his eyes. He couldn’t quite believe it himself, but the two of them had managed to create a rather pleasant atmosphere, here inside her head. His nervousness had almost completely died down, and he was enjoying, really, _genuinely_ enjoying his conversation with her.

“Yes, yes, I’m sure I’ll survive.” White responded with a wave of her hand. “And I’m sure you’ll do fine with whatever business it is you have to attend to back on Earth.”

“Yeah…” He glanced away momentarily.

“Do be quick about it though, we couldn’t bear to lose you for any longer than absolutely necessary.” She pressed, her overzealous endearment on full display.

“I’ll try!” He affirmed with a warm snicker.

Though he normally found her affection suffocating, it was good to know that there were no ill feelings on her end regarding the whole incident. As worn out and dejected as he had been feeling as of late, it was nice to experience such unabashed, unreserved affection, to hear somebody clearly lay out just how desperately they wanted him around (even if that person _was_ prone to unnecessary theatrics). Her words may be melodramatic, and her tone exaggerated for the sake of theatrical flair, but her sentiment was genuine.

It made him feel important, in a good way.

But every half-gem has his limits, and he was quickly growing tired. It had been well past midnight when he departed from Earth and made his way to Homeworld, and the adrenaline that had kept him going thus far was beginning to filter out of his system. He felt his eyelids begin to droop and failed to supress a yawn.

White, now with a year and a half’s worth of experience in dealing with his organic sleeping habits under her belt, caught on immediately.

“Well,” she began with a sigh. “I suppose that’s our cue to put an end to our little chat. It wouldn’t do to have you fall asleep on the palace floor again, now would it?”

Steven grimaced, flushing slightly.

“Are you guys ever gonna let me live that one down?”

White simply smiled, clearly amused by the memory, and proceeded to stand up, her massive form looming over him as she rose. Steven decided to follow suit, pushing himself off the platform with a near-weightless leap that propelled him forward several feet and brought him softly down onto the floor.

“Now, now, I was only teasing.” Said White as she stepped down from the platform, her thunderous footfall shaking the room and threatening to throw Steven off balance. He managed to keep his footing, however, owed to years of experience in walking alongside three beings whose footsteps alone had the power to flatten entire landscapes.

“I’ll send you down to the throne room and you can take the warp from there.” She said, more of a command than a suggestion.

He made no attempt to argue, grateful for the lift.

“Yeah, thanks.”

He followed her across the chamber, a few short steps for her, a dozen or so floating leaps for him, to the wall opposite the platform. From it, she effortlessly called forth an opaque, polished orb which split horizontally and receded to create a platform. Eager to get home to his bed, Steven stepped up onto it, turning to face White one final time.

“See you soon.” He said with a wave and a weary smile.

“Very soon, I should hope!” She responded heartily.

Steven spared a final glance at the chamber, at the platform splintered down the middle, at the jagged crater to the left and the empty space to the right. He had terrible memories of this place, memories which plagued his sleep and shook his waking mind, memories that could never be erased.

He looked to White. He had terrible memories of her, too. Memories of her aloof, condescending attitude when they first met, memories of her biting, cruel words and her evil cackle, memories of the awful, awful thing she did to him in this very room.

But there was good, in amongst the badness. Here in this chamber, he had learned who he truly was, who he truly had been his entire life. Here, though he had been split apart, he came together again in a dizzying, ecstatic fusion dance, had felt a gratifying, self-affirming warmth the likes of which he’d likely never feel again. White Diamond, who so many had deemed unchangeable and impossible to reach, had been changed, here in this very room. Stood now before him was the ultimate example of transformative redemption (at least, in his eyes), proof of the notion than anyone and anything was capable of change, no matter how old, no matter how ignorant, no matter how flawed. If White Diamond could be changed, if Homeworld could be changed, if the entire _Empire_ could be changed, then his situation could be changed, too.

“Safe travels!” White called out as the orb re-took its form, its glossy barrier surging up on all sides like a wave of liquid aluminium. Just before his view was obstructed by the vesicle closing in around him, Steven, eyes widening, took notice of one key detail he had failed to catch during their conversation.

Her nails had been filed down.

* * *

Warping back to the temple in the dead of night was a worryingly common occurrence for Steven these days. Usually he’d warp in, wearily greet whoever happened to be in the living room at the time and then drag his tired body up to bed. This time, however, he needed to be absolutely sure he wouldn’t be caught. Pearl would have a conniption if she knew he had gone to Homeworld without telling anyone. Garnet would be disappointed, maybe even hurt, he thought, as he remembered with a pang of guilt that he had promised her he’d stay away for the time being. Amethyst? She would definitely grill him for answers, and probably wouldn’t let him go to bed before she got the information she wanted.

He could probably avoid the trouble if he had warped back to the dome at the top of the house and made his way across the deck to his room, but he hadn’t. He knew it was risky, warping directly into his living room when one of the Gems could easily be there, but he must have been too tired to care, too exhausted to think straight, because despite that knowledge he did it anyway.

He wondered if maybe there was a part of him that wanted to get caught.

As the warp stream receded, Steven found himself standing before his living room, dark and silent. His tired eyes scanned the room. Not a Gem in sight. Breathing a sigh of relief, he stepped off the platform and plodded across the room, briefly glancing back at the temple door before dragging himself up the stairs.

Once in his bedroom, he allowed himself to collapse onto his bed, face first, hitting the mattress like a sack of bricks. Burying his face into his pillow, he debated the true importance of wearing night clothes. Would it really be so bad if he just went to sleep now? Were pyjamas really necessary in this modern society? Maybe Era 3 could become the era of sleeping in whatever he darn well pleases. But alas, societal norms and expectations got the better of him, and he concluded that it would, in fact, be better if he didn’t fall asleep in jeans. Pulling himself up with a displeased groan, he chucked his phone onto the duvet and tossed his jacket into his laundry hamper. It was definitely beginning to stink, and body-spray was proving to no longer be a suitable substitute for actual hygiene. The shirt could stay on for now, but the jeans had to go, the flip flops too. Eyes half-closed, he hastily searched his drawers for a pair of pyjama bottoms and changed into them, tossing his jeans in the general direction of the hamper and flopping back down onto the bed, kicking of his sandals as he went. Drowsily, he covered himself with his duvet and curled up tight.

On a whim, he grabbed his phone and unlocked the screen, peeking at it through one eye, only open by a sliver. There was a single message waiting to be read. The time stamp informed him that it was sent just after he had left, though he couldn’t receive it until he arrived back on Earth.

_[Tell me how it goes.]_

Despite his desperate need for sleep, Steven opened his weary eyes, squinting against the harsh light of the screen, and composed a quick response.

_[It went fine, I’ll tell you about it tomorrow.]_

Heart emoji, send, done.

Finally, he stuffed his phone under his pillow and allowed himself to drift off to sleep.

* * *

Steven awoke the next morning to the first truly free day he had had in a long, long time. No responsibilities, no unspoken words hanging over his head or difficult decisions to be made. Just a beautiful, peaceful, regular old Beach City day ripe for the seizing. So much potential, and yet he couldn’t think of a single thing to do with it. By temporarily casting off his Homeworld duties and taking a much-needed vacation, he had essentially traded one type of pressure for another, and was now anxious to take full advantage of his free time. Staring up at his bedroom ceiling, he went over his options.

_‘I could play video games, or hang out with the Cool Kids. I could play guitar with dad, or by myself on the beach. I could take a walk round Little Homeworld and visit Bismuth, Lapis and Peridot.’_

All fine options, all equally appealing, and certainly not an exhaustive list.

Taking in a deep, rousing breath and stretching out with a satisfied hum, Steven decided that there was no time like the present. He got out of bed, dug out a set of clean clothes and got ready, feeling lighter and more energetic than he had in weeks. Today would be a good day, he would make sure of it, and at the end of it when he collapsed back onto his bed he would be exhausted in that serene, contented sort of way that made sleep feel like a blissful embrace and not an inescapable necessity.

In the morning, he ate a hearty breakfast, managed to clean his plate without feeling the queasy sensation that so often accompanied his meals these days. He called Connie, told her about his secret excursion in exacting detail and shed a happy tear or two exclaiming ‘I did it! I did it!’ and felt his breath catch in his throat when she told him she was proud of him in that sweet, palpably genuine voice of hers.

In the afternoon he wandered the boardwalk, chatting amicably with human and gem alike, visited his many friends and acquaintances and gleefully informed them he would be free to hang out anytime for the next few weeks or so. He took a trip to Little Homeworld, saw the sights and paid many compliments to Bismuth for her hard work and dedication. He listened to Peridot zealously explain all of her new inventions, even if half of the technical jargon flew straight over his head. He had a heart-to-heart with Lapis, and was relieved to find she was adjusting well to her new life there.

In the evening he proposed a beach barbeque, just close friends and family. It was autumn, and the air was getting colder, but upon seeing his newfound zest for life the Gems found that they just couldn’t say no. He called his dad, called Connie, managed to pull Bismuth, Lapis and and Peridot away from their duties and gathered them all together on the beach.

And there he sat on the sand, donning his signature pink jacket (now freshly washed, courtesy of Pearl), with his guitar resting snugly in his lap. Connie was sitting next to him, watching intently with her chin resting on her hand as he plucked and strummed his way through a number of familiar tunes, placid melodies enveloping the group in a peaceful ambience. The sun had already slipped past the horizon, making way for the stars now on full display, tiny glittering specks strewn across an inky curtain of darkness. The light from the house shone down onto the beach, overpowering the meagre amber glow of the grill, from which the alluring scent of seared meat wafted towards Steven and his treasured companion.

Greg called out, announcing that the food was ready, but Steven made no move until he felt Connie nudge him with her elbow.

“Hey, Earth to Steven Universe! Are you zoning out? Your dad said the food’s ready.” She said, eyebrow quirked and an amused smirk on her lips.

“I know, I heard.” He reassured her blithely, concentrating on his fingering. “I’ll be over in a sec.”

“Well, you might wanna hurry because Amethyst is over there and she looks ready to eat the whole lot.” She teased, causing him to cease playing and whip his head round to see for himself.

Sure enough, Amethyst was eagerly attempting to manoeuvre past Pearl, who had stepped between her and the grill and was emphatically insisting that she wait until the organic beings that actually require nutritional sustenance get their fair share first. Garnet, now looking to Steven and Connie, was beckoning them over. A sure sign that her Future Vision had foretold a bleak future in which he doesn’t get any of his dad’s signature hot dogs.

“Agh! Hurry, Connie!” He shouted as he leapt to his feet and sprinted towards the group, closely followed by his giggling friend, the two of them kicking up sand along the way. Thankfully, he and Connie managed to secure a good portion of the food, occasionally batting away a greedy purple hand that threatened to pinch a sausage or two from their plates.

And so Steven’s blissful, jubilant evening continued on, and he savoured every second of it. He played the guitar and laughed and reminisced, spoke excitedly about the upcoming road trip, shed a few tears and doled out plenty of physical affection, got sand between his toes and remembered how it felt to be a teenager again.

The idea of going back in time and changing the past was immeasurably enticing, as was the thought of starting his life over from the beginning and preventing every foolish misstep before they even occurred. But his mistakes, his past, his traumas all remain, embedded in space-time, unmovable and unchangeable. The past is untouchable, he must accept it as it is. The future? It doesn’t really exist, it will never arrive, whether he lives for a hundred years or for a hundred thousand. All that matters is the present, where everything is real and tangible and changeable.

And right here, right now, in the present moment?

He was feeling pretty okay.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh my God, it's finally over. This fic evolved into something so much bigger than I ever could have imagined, all the kudos and the supportive comments were absolutely vital in keeping me motivated and inspired, so thank y'all for being so lovely to me and my little passion project. 10 chapters is certainly longer than I had first intended, but here we are, and I feel like I managed to find a satisfying conclusion.  
Steven is feeling stable, and the future is bright.
> 
> That is until Rebecca Sugar and her team absolutely destroy his newfound peace in SUF lmaooo  
So, more official Steven Universe content is coming in the very near future, and I have a few more one-shot ideas I'd like to bang out before the 7th comes around.  
Thanks for everything, see you all in the Future~!


End file.
